What a difference a year makes - Blu-ray now most consistent PQ [Text View]

dobyblue

06-20-07, 12:51 PM

Do you have a list of the movies reviewed? Since Blu-ray concentrates more on newer titles, that wouldn't surprise me. Judging the overall PQ of a format with mostly new titles (BR) versus those with a lot of older titles (HD-DVD) isn't really fair.

You want me to post the entire list here?

HD DVD first 20 reviews.

Phantom of the Opera
Apollo 13
Million Dollar Baby
Doom
Assault on Precinct 13
Unforgiven
Cinderella Man
The Fugutive
Blazing Saddles
Bourne Supremacy
Constantine
16 Blocks
Dukes of Hazzard
Enter The Dragon
ATL
Sahara
Sleepy Hollow
Tomb Raider
Sky Captain
Italian Job
Phantom of the Opera
Million Dollar Baby
Doom
Unforgiven
The Fugutive
Blazing Saddles
Constantine
16 Blocks
Dukes of Hazzard
Enter The Dragon
ATL
Sahara
Sleepy Hollow
Tomb Raider
Sky Captain
Italian Job
Aeon Flux
Caddyshack
Bone Collector
The Last Samurai
Serenity
The Last Samurai
Phantom of the Opera
Doom
Million Dollar Baby
Swordfish
Cinderella Man
Apollo 13
Assault on Precinct 13
Full Metal Jacket
Rumour Has It
Training Day
Unforgiven
Jarhead
Blazing Saddles
Van Helsing
Chronicles of Riddick
Goodfellas
Firewall
Constantine
Million Dollar Baby
Phantom of the Opera
Firewall
Blazing Saddles
Syriana
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
The Perfect Storm
Unleashed
Animal House
Good Night, Good Luck
Caddyshack
The Searchers
The Lake House
Troy
Polar Express
Robin Hood
Batman Begins
Grand Prix
The Thing
Army of Darkness

Blu-ray first 20 reviews

50 First Dates
Crash
Basic Instinct 2
Benchwarmers
Big Hit
Corpse Bride
The Fugitive
16 Blocks
Click
Monster House
Captain
Haunted Mansion
Dark Water
Great Raid
Tomb Raider
Gone in 60 Seconds
Glory Road
Sleepy Hollow
MI3
Sahara
50 First Dates
Basic Instinct 2
Benchwarmers
Training Day
Good Night Good Luck
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Rumour Has It
Memento
Hitch
Fifth Element
RV
House of Flying Daggers
Stealth
xXx
Ultraviolet
The Last Waltz
Species
Silent Hill
Underworld Evolution
The Terminator
Terminator 2
Terminator
Terminator
House of Flying Daggers
House of Flying Daggers
Hitch
Fifth Element
Fifth Element
50 First Dates
Ultraviolet
Basic Instict 2
Underworld Evolution
Benchwarmers
Stealth
The Punisher
SWAT
Species
Saw
Robocop
Crash
The Benchwarmers
Memento
A Knight's Tale
The Terminator
Ultraviolet
Underworld Evolution
RV
Training Day
Good Night, Good Luck
xXx
SWAT
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Silent Hill
Tomb Raider
Haunted Mansion
Dark Water
Sky Captain
Brothers Grimm
Gone in 60 Seconds
MI3

HD DVD Last 20 reviews

Freedom Writers
Smokey and the Bandit
Norbit
Midnight Run
The Frighteners
Lost in Translation
Trading Places
The River
Dragonheart
Coming to America
Rio Bravo
The Cowboys
Harsh Times
Breach
Black Christmas
Living Landscapes
Music and Lyrics
Bruce Almighty
The Warriors
Daylight
The Skeleton Key
Smokey and the Bandit
Norbit
Trading Places
Coming to America
Lost in Translation
Dragonheart
Midnight Run
The River
Planet Earth
Rio Bravo
Black Christmas
The Frighteners
Harsh Times
The Cowboys
Liar Liar
Breach
Born on the Fourth of July
Bruce Almighty
Meaning of Life
Freedom Fighters
The Fountain
Trading Places
The Road Warrior
Coming to America
Terminator 2
The 40yr Old Virgin
The Skeleton Key
Black Christmas
Lost in Translation
Drgonheart
Harsh Times
The Frighteners
Midnight Run
Planet Earth
The Cowboys
Rio Bravo
Bubble
Liar Liar
Bruce Almighty
The Good Shepherd
Smokin' Aces
The Jerk
Battle of the Bulge
Ultimate Matrix Collection
The Hitcher
Eternal Sunshine
Norbit
The Skeleton Key
Midnight Run
Black Christmas
Feast
Rio Bravo
The Cowboys
Terminator 2
Harsh Times
The Graduate
School for Scoundrels
The 40yr Old Virgin
Liar Liar

Blu-ray Last 20 reviews

Freedom Writers
Basic Instinct
Norbit
Cruel Intentions
Weeds Season 1
Curse of the Golden Flower
Trading Places
The Messengers
Coming to America
Blood Diamond
Rio Bravo
Hellboy
The Cowboys
Ghost Rider
Seven Years in Tibet
Living Landscapes
Music and Lyrics
Bridge to Terabithia
Primevel
The Warriors
Norbit
POTC Curse Black Pearl
POTC Dead Man's Chest
Chris Botti
Trading Places
Apocalypto
Letters from Iwo Jima
Coming to America
The Messengers
Bruce Springsteen
Curse of the Golden Flower
Hellboy
Planet Earth
Blood Diamond
Rescue Me Season 3
Rio Bravo
The Cowboys
Primeval
Incubus
Ghost Rider
Norbit
Mission Impossible
Freedom Writers
The Road Warrior
Coming to America
Rescue Me Season 3
The Messengers
Battle of the Bulge
Hellboy
Curse of the Golden Flower
Planet Earth
Trading Places
Seven Years in Tibet
Cruel Intentions
Weeds Season 1
Letters from Iwo Jima
Rio Bravo
Blood Diamond
The Fountain
Basic Instict
Layer Cake
King Arthur
GI Jane
Dreamgirls
Failure to Launch
The Queen
Donnie Brasco
Mission Impossible
POTC Dead Man's Chest
Mission Impossible 2
Closer
Flags of our Fathers
Freedom Fighters
Trading Places
Coming to America
Rescue Me Season 3
Norbit
Hellboy
Battle of the Bulge
Seven Years in Tibet

UxiSXRD

06-20-07, 12:55 PM

Very interesting. I presume you have this all in a spreadsheet. Maybe color code the unique (or shared) titles.

dobyblue

06-20-07, 01:00 PM

Very interesting. I presume you have this all in a spreadsheet. Maybe color code the unique (or shared) titles.

I track all the reviews from 5 websites AND then place them by studio too.
That's all the work I need thanks. :)

INcidentally the total PQ/SQ by studio is quite surprising as of June 18th, 2007.

Total Studio
4.27 Buena Vista
4.00 Sony
3.96 Fox
3.93 Paramount
3.80 Warner
3.75 Lionsgate
3.74 Universal
3.71 Weinstein

Goatse

06-20-07, 01:02 PM

recently 5-10 universal titles has been a stinker, no hd remastering. Guys that did the first 5th element got laid off and hired by universal.

WayneL

06-20-07, 01:08 PM

What happens when you exclude the outlier ratings? How do you detect a systemic bias by a reviewer for one format over the other? I don't think the results mean much.

dobyblue

06-20-07, 01:49 PM

What happens when you exclude the outlier ratings? How do you detect a systemic bias by a reviewer for one format over the other? I don't think the results mean much.

You account for reviewer bias by including several sites in your reviews.

I track High Def Digest, Home THeater Spot, DVD Talk, Upcoming Discs and Home Theater Forum. Every review that has a score is included, none are excluded.

As of June 18th, 2007 there are 836 Blu-ray reviews and 731 HD DVD reviews with scores from those 5 sites.

HDD 172HD/212BD, HTS 171HD/201BD, HTF 55HD/76BD, UD 118HD/106BD, Talk 215HD/241BD
06.18.07
HD DVD PQ SQ TOTAL Blu-ray PQ SQ TOTAL
HighDef 3.96 3.64 3.80 HighDef 3.99 3.83 3.91
HTSpot 3.99 3.86 3.93 HTSpot 4.02 4.25 4.14
DVDTalk 3.66 3.51 3.58 DVDTalk 3.64 3.68 3.66
HTForum 4.04 3.80 3.92 HTForum 4.28 4.10 4.19
UpDisc 4.03 3.83 3.93 UpDisc 4.05 4.14 4.10
Totals 3.90 3.69 3.79 Totals 3.93 3.95 3.94

UxiSXRD

06-20-07, 01:52 PM

What happens when you exclude the outlier ratings? How do you detect a systemic bias by a reviewer for one format over the other? I don't think the results mean much.

Yeah Bracke especially obviously leans way too far to HDDVD....

But I'd say he should be at least somewhat balanced out by the others especially when he doesn't have significant deviation from the median.

UxiSXRD

06-20-07, 01:54 PM

I track all the reviews from 5 websites AND then place them by studio too.
That's all the work I need thanks. :)

INcidentally the total PQ/SQ by studio is quite surprising as of June 18th, 2007.

Total Studio
4.27 Buena Vista
4.00 Sony
3.96 Fox
3.93 Paramount
3.80 Warner
3.75 Lionsgate
3.74 Universal
3.71 Weinstein

Excellent info. So... do you have this broken down by time or just first and last 20? I'd love to see a graph or two and particularly see if there's any correlation to the sales spikes of the big BD release weeks. And to soothe your fears of mucho work, that should be doable in a few mouse clicks. :)

briankmonkey

06-20-07, 01:58 PM

dobyblue

06-20-07, 02:34 PM

Excellent info. So... do you have this broken down by time or just first and last 20? I'd love to see a graph or two and particularly see if there's any correlation to the sales spikes of the big BD release weeks. And to soothe your fears of mucho work, that should be doable in a few mouse clicks. :)

I spend an hour updating it once every month. I have it at various stages, but it's certainly not by time.

Other than upcoming discs all the reviews should be in pretty much chronological order form the site they were taken from and UD as well since I added them with new titles.

I just decided to break off the first and last 20 on a seperate page to see the difference and was quite shocked that it was that much of a turnaround.

The only differences I can really show are the numbers.

January 21st, 2007

HD DVD PQ SQ TOTAL Blu-ray PQ SQ TOTAL
HighDef 3.90 3.67 3.78 HighDef 3.94 3.84 3.89
HTSpot 4.02 3.90 3.96 HTSpot 3.83 4.22 4.03
DVDTalk 3.66 3.50 3.58 DVDTalk 3.48 3.70 3.59
Totals 3.84 3.68 3.76 Totals 3.72 3.94 3.83

March 29th, 2007

PQ SQ TOTAL HD DVD PQ SQ TOTAL Blu-ray
3.92 3.67 3.80 HighDef 3.91 3.85 3.88 HighDef
4.02 3.89 3.96 HTSpot 3.95 4.25 4.10 HTSpot
3.67 3.51 3.59 DVDTalk 3.57 3.69 3.63 DVDTalk
4.02 3.86 3.94 Udiscs 3.99 4.16 4.08 Udiscs
4.14 3.76 3.95 HTForum 4.21 4.12 4.16 HTForum
3.90 3.71 3.80 Totals 3.85 3.96 3.91 Totals

April 25th, 2007

HDD 132HD/169BD, HTS 137HD/167BD, HTF 36HD/59BD, UD 101HD/89BD, Talk 172HD/203BD
04.25.07
HD DVD PQ SQ TOTAL Blu-ray PQ SQ TOTAL
HighDef 3.95 3.64 3.80 HighDef 3.96 3.85 3.90
HTSpot 4.02 3.88 3.95 HTSpot 3.96 4.23 4.09
DVDTalk 3.66 3.51 3.58 DVDTalk 3.60 3.67 3.63
HTForum 4.13 3.76 3.94 HTForum 4.19 4.08 4.14
UpDisc 4.03 3.87 3.95 UpDisc 3.99 4.16 4.08
Totals 3.91 3.70 3.80 Totals 3.88 3.95 3.91

June 1st, 2007

HDD 159HD/198BD, HTS 159HD/190BD, HTF 43HD/71BD, UD 110HD/104BD, Talk 200HD/222BD
06.01.07
HD DVD PQ SQ TOTAL Blu-ray PQ SQ TOTAL
HighDef 3.97 3.67 3.82 HighDef 3.98 3.85 3.92
HTSpot 4.02 3.87 3.94 HTSpot 4.02 4.25 4.13
DVDTalk 3.69 3.51 3.60 DVDTalk 3.63 3.68 3.66
HTForum 4.15 3.82 3.99 HTForum 4.27 4.09 4.18
UpDisc 4.04 3.86 3.95 UpDisc 4.04 4.15 4.09
Totals 3.92 3.71 3.82 Totals 3.93 3.96 3.94

And of course June 18th, 2007.

HDD 172HD/212BD, HTS 171HD/201BD, HTF 55HD/76BD, UD 118HD/106BD, Talk 215HD/241BD
06.18.07
HD DVD PQ SQ TOTAL Blu-ray PQ SQ TOTAL
HighDef 3.96 3.64 3.80 HighDef 3.99 3.83 3.91
HTSpot 3.99 3.86 3.93 HTSpot 4.02 4.25 4.14
DVDTalk 3.66 3.51 3.58 DVDTalk 3.64 3.68 3.66
HTForum 4.04 3.80 3.92 HTForum 4.28 4.10 4.19
UpDisc 4.03 3.83 3.93 UpDisc 4.05 4.14 4.10
Totals 3.90 3.69 3.79 Totals 3.93 3.95 3.94

jaewon

06-20-07, 02:55 PM

Wow, good work. Thanks for taking the time to put all this together for us.

Blu-ray is on the rise.

beatboy77

06-20-07, 02:58 PM

donricouga

06-20-07, 03:28 PM

Disney and Sony have definitely raised the bar. Universal is choosing the quantity over quality motto and Warner is more or less the same. Although a few of Warner and Paramounts catalog titles have been quite nice.
At this point, overall, blu-ray is definitely delivering the goods in terms of PQ. Even SQ is on par with more lossless tracks !
Good time to be blu :)

PapaSloth

06-20-07, 03:29 PM

Goatse

06-20-07, 03:30 PM

Jiffylush

06-20-07, 03:34 PM

pretty much all blu ray has PCM, but only few hddvds have truehd.

Many, yes, pretty much all, no.

Thanks Warner!

desmond212

06-20-07, 03:36 PM

warner should get its act together.

dobyblue

06-20-07, 03:46 PM

Sony's average PQ has gone from 3.76 to 3.91 just since March.

They are really on the ball, especially with those T5e and HoFD reviews being counted in there.

jkcheng122

06-20-07, 03:55 PM

Looking at those numbers, the picture quality is pretty much a wash but the sound quality numbers seem to be higher for BD netting higher totals. Any guesses why sound quality would be so different? That surprises me, since I personally don't have the greatest ears and am hard-pressed to hear a difference (I'm format neutral).

Edit: I'm talking about the cummulative averages here, not the first/last 20.

like others have said, lossless vs compressed codecs is the reason for the the discrepancy in sq ratings. video has started to go blu as well with universal churning out catalog title after catalog title without really giving each one the proper care needed. while this may help match up total titles available vs blu-ray, the quality department is really taking a dive as a result as u basically have one studio trying to match the number of titles output by several studios.

Josh Z

06-20-07, 04:42 PM

I am glad you started this thread as I have noticed this as well. I have noticed Disney, but especially Sony has REALLY stepped it up, whereas Universal and even Weinstein have really dropped the ball.

Wait a second, beatboy77 thinks that the Blu-ray exclusive studios have "stepped it up" and the HD DVD exclusive studios have "really dropped the ball"?

Shocking. :rolleyes:

Next, why don't we ask Ronald McDonald what he thinks of the food at Burger King?

donricouga

06-20-07, 04:47 PM

Wait a second, beatboy77 thinks that the Blu-ray exclusive studios have "stepped it up" and the HD DVD exclusive studios have "really dropped the ball"?

Shocking. :rolleyes:

Next, why don't we ask Ronald McDonald what he thinks of the food at Burger King?

So do you think the latest releases of Universal are top notch PQ ?
Do you think the latest releases of Disney/Buena Vista and Sony are bad in terms of PQ ?

briankmonkey

06-20-07, 04:50 PM

So do you think the latest releases of Universal are top notch PQ ?
Do you think the latest releases of Disney/Buena Vista and Sony are bad in terms of PQ ?

After those opinions on Traffic pic comparisons I'm very curious to see a response :eek:

patrick99

06-20-07, 04:53 PM

After those opinions on Traffic pic comparisons I'm very curious to see a response :eek:

Aren't we all.

Josh Z

06-20-07, 05:21 PM

So do you think the latest releases of Universal are top notch PQ ?

Do you think the latest releases of Disney/Buena Vista and Sony are bad in terms of PQ ?

Are you judging the quality of their transfers, or your opinion on the movies' photography? A movie like Lost in Translation (which has been complained about a lot here) has photography that is dark and grainy by nature. That doesn't make it a bad transfer.

You want to look at a bad transfer, look at Lionsgate's new Blu-ray disc for Dirty Dancing, which is riddled with aliasing from start to finish. Or, honestly, look at just about any Lionsgate disc. Almost all of them are a mess in one way or another (edge enhancement, DNR, filtering, compression artifacts, etc.).

Universal has made a business decision to release movies from a broad cross-section of their catalog, regardless of whether they are bright and colorful by nature. Sony has made a business decision to release primarily only "eye candy" movies that they know people who fall for the Tier system of judging picture quality will rave about.

Yes, Sony and Disney have come a long way in the past year, and my recent reviews of their discs have reflected that improvement. I wouldn't deny that, though I do have to ask what the hell took them so long.

Universal has put out a lot of good movies, most of them looking as good as they can. That's to be commended also. At the end of the day, I'd rather watch a good movie in its best presentation than a crap movie that makes sparklier eye candy.

(I am not going to relive that "Traffic" debate. A lot of people on this forum turn into raving lunatics over that subject. I'll have no part of that anymore, thank you very much.)

Tony S

06-20-07, 05:25 PM

patrick99

06-20-07, 05:31 PM

Thanks to the OP for this posting.
I find Warners scores a bit distressing. If I check my S DVD library, most of my titles are Warner. And very good transfers at that.
Perhaps I should wait a bit befor getting my feet wet in the hi def pool. :(
Tony

Just don't buy any Warner high def discs; they have decided that mediocrity is good enough for the time being.

sonyfangirl

06-20-07, 05:34 PM

Thanks for this thread. It makes me feel better about choosing Blu Ray.

dpags

06-20-07, 05:37 PM

Nice work, dobyblue.

donricouga

06-20-07, 05:37 PM

Are you judging the quality of their transfers, or your opinion on the movies' photography? A movie like Lost in Translation (which has been complained about a lot here) has photography that is dark and grainy by nature. That doesn't make it a bad transfer.

You want to look at a bad transfer, look at Lionsgate's new Blu-ray disc for Dirty Dancing, which is riddled with aliasing from start to finish. Or, honestly, look at just about any Lionsgate disc. Almost all of them are a mess in one way or another (edge enhancement, DNR, filtering, compression artifacts, etc.).

Universal has made a business decision to release movies from a broad cross-section of their catalog, regardless of whether they are bright and colorful by nature. Sony has made a business decision to release primarily only "eye candy" movies that they know people who fall for the Tier system of judging picture quality will rave about.

Yes, Sony and Disney have come a long way in the past year, and my recent reviews of their discs have reflected that improvement. I wouldn't deny that, though I do have to ask what the hell took them so long.

Universal has put out a lot of good movies, most of them looking as good as they can. That's to be commended also. At the end of the day, I'd rather watch a good movie in its best presentation than a crap movie that makes sparklier eye candy.

(I am not going to relive that "Traffic" debate. A lot of people on this forum turn into raving lunatics over that subject. I'll have no part of that anymore, thank you very much.)

I personally have not seen traffic so no comment. There is no denying that Universal has put out some good titles when they have spent the time to do so. Their current business decision though is what is in question. To quickly release movies without to much regard to giving the best PQ possible.
Whereas Sony and Disney/BV decided to make the best HD possible experience.
Look how much BV improved the PQ for Pirates over the DVD. Its immense.
As for Sony they are releasing slowly but with great care. Most of their bigger titles will probably be released in Q4(i.e. Spiderman).

This whole thread is not about content so that point is irrelevant. I watched Riddick on hddvd which had great picture but was a crapfest.

Urza

06-20-07, 05:39 PM

Thanks for this thread. It makes me feel better about choosing Blu Ray.

Why do you need validation over a tech toy? Just enjoy what you have. Your name has Sony in it anyway, so I doubt you were going to hate BD.

hmurchison

06-20-07, 05:40 PM

ditcho

06-20-07, 06:00 PM

Thanks for this thread. It makes me feel better about choosing Blu Ray.

I wonder if the nick oprahfanboy is taken :D

SyHD

06-20-07, 06:52 PM

Doby have these scores been matched up so that we're counting only releases that occur on both platforms?

I believe your previous work was simply an amalgamation of recent titles, their scores and averaging these scores together for a result. That of course would mean the results are meaningless because you cannot normalize the test at the movie level.

Why even bother comparing releases that are available for both platforms? Everyone here knows neutral studios use the same encode and/or cater to the lowest common denominator which is HD DVD. There is absolutely no point comparing neutral titles unless the studio in question optimize their release to the specific platform. This includes not skimping on audio/video by using B-25 discs or using the same encode.

hmurchison

06-20-07, 07:05 PM

Why even bother comparing releases that are available for both platforms? Everyone here knows neutral studios use the same encode and/or cater to the lowest common denominator which is HD DVD. There is absolutely no point comparing neutral titles unless the studio in question optimize their release to the specific platform. This includes not skimping on audio/video by using B-25 discs.

Each person should be doing their own comparisons. I happen to be one of the many millions who are not color blind. Why is that a factor? Because....what Kenneth Brown and Peter Bracke see throw their biological ocular apparatus is different than what I see.

The goal of a movie or audio review is to find a reviewer that most closely approximates the tastes that you embody yourslf. Thus if I find that Bracke's top flight mega PQ movies all match mine then I know we are closely aligned. But if you have disagreements with the relative quality of a move then Bracke's reviews will have a lesser effect on your ability to guess the PQ.

When Doby attempts to create a thread and states that Blu-ray HD DVD or whatever is more consistent in delivering high quality movies it's fallacious at best.

1. If you're not comparing the same releases then you haven't normalized anything.

2. Since you haven't paired movie releases you have variable that wreck your data. Merely taking the last 10 movies does not help as Blu-ray may have their last 10 movie engender an avg age of 3 years whilst HD DVD's last 10 may be over a decade old.

Of course recent releases are going to look good.

This "scientific" breakdown wouldn't cut muster in a middle school science project. It's platform jingoism and frankly insulting to some.

SyHD

06-20-07, 07:11 PM

hmurchison

06-20-07, 07:21 PM

The two formats ARE NOT THE SAME ...how the hell can you normalize them? How the hell can you normalize a 25 GB encode to that 40-45 GB encode? How the hell can you normalize a format that maxed out at 36 MBit/s to one that maxed out over 54 MBits/s?

The specs are immaterial. If you're talking about the PQ of two different platforms you gain nothing by comparing disparate movies.

On a dual release, either Flags of Our Fathers or Letters from Iwo Jima" there is an bitrate difference between the movies yet the reviews are still close. Thus it's easy to posit that the differences in a singular movie's encode is likely to vary little in PQ however without having an HD DVD counterpart to some of the Blu-ray movies in Doby's selections we don't have any way to verify that the quality is intrinsic to Blu-ray. Evidence on neutral discs shows that even with bitrate difference the quality is still very imperceptable or very close regardless of capabilities of respective players/platform.

SyHD

06-20-07, 07:30 PM

The specs are immaterial. If you're talking about the PQ of two different platforms you gain nothing by comparing disparate movies.

On a dual release, either Flags of Our Fathers or Letters from Iwo Jima" there is an bitrate difference between the movies yet the reviews are still close. Thus it's easy to posit that the differences in a singular movie's encode is likely to vary little in PQ however without having an HD DVD counterpart to some of the Blu-ray movies in Doby's selections we don't have any way to verify that the quality is intrinsic to Blu-ray. Evidence on neutral discs shows that even with bitrate difference the quality is still very imperceptable or very close regardless of capabilities of respective players/platform.

Reviewers did notice a difference with Flags of Our Fathers because Paramount optimized this title for the specific platform. By all indications, the Blu-ray version looked sharper. As with Letters from Iwo Jima, both versions were the same because both used the same VC-1 encode.

hmurchison

06-20-07, 07:39 PM

Reviewers did notice a difference with Flags of Our Fathers because Paramount optimized this title for the specific platform. By all indications, the Blu-ray version looked sharper. As with Letters from Iwo Jima, both versions were the same because both used the same VC-1 encode.

Both got 5 stars for video. The commentary was

In a side by side comparison of the film between the VC-1 transfer on this HD DVD version and the AVC MPEG-4 transfer on the Blu-ray, it does seem that the Blu-ray/AVC encode is the tiniest bit sharper, while the HD DVD/VC-1 is the slightest bit softer. Neither is an advantage to my eyes, and each encode is identical otherwise -- fans of both camps should be ecstatic to see this film looking so good.

So the Blu-ray version uses 75GB to accomplish what HD DVD does in 30GB because, as the reviewer states, there is no perceptible advantage. Most of the evidence to date supports that BD50 is a false economy. There are 5 star titles in BD25 as easily as BD50.

back on topic....Blu-ray's recent releases of movies that are young only helps their score. Apocalypto was done using a quickly maturing Panavision Genesis. Of course it's going to look good it's had modern "filming" technique and world class color grading done.

I'm sorry. Doby trots this thread out everywhere as if he's scientifically found the answer to our PQ questions and what I see is process that has more holes than swiss cheese.

Both formats look great so then you go down to content and price. PQ isn't the battle...that horse died a long time ago.

SyHD

06-20-07, 07:48 PM

Both got 5 stars for video. The commentary was

So the Blu-ray version uses 75GB to accomplish what HD DVD does in 30GB because, as the reviewer states, there is no perceptible advantage. Most of the evidence to date supports that BD50 is a false economy. There are 5 star titles in BD25 as easily as BD50.

back on topic....Blu-ray's recent releases of movies that are young only helps their score. Apocalypto was done using a quickly maturing Panavision Genesis. Of course it's going to look good it's had modern "filming" technique and world class color grading done.

I'm sorry. Doby trots this thread out everywhere as if he's scientifically found the answer to our PQ questions and what I see is process that has more holes than swiss cheese.

Both formats look great so then you go down to content and price. PQ isn't the battle...that horse died a long time ago.

You can say WHATEVER you want to make you sleep better at nights. The reviewer did notice a difference ...thats all that matters. We are on a video enthusiasts site are we not? Why bother spending thousands of dollars on equipment then if you are not bothered with a "slight" difference? Given a choice between pictures, I will choose the sharper image every day of the week.

So now the PQ horse died since Blu-ray surpassed HD DVD. Its funny how it was still alive back when Blu-ray just got started as a format.

hmurchison

06-20-07, 07:58 PM

I'll extend that same benefit to you. The assumption that your eyes are exactly like that reviewers is preposterous. What you seek is affirmation for your purchase. You "want" to feel like the extra money that you're spending on Blu-ray is warrented and thanfully the BDA worked up a bunch of excusives so that when you begin to falter in the face of reality (which shows both formats look closer to identical in content released on both) you have the "Content is King" mantra to fall back on.

HD DVD fans have thrown off that veneer a long time ago. We know that the PQ is good, we know that the reason why we don't have parity in content is because of these silly exclusive deals. We choose HD DVD not because of the backroom deals but because value high quality at an affordable price. I sleep well knowing I chose the right format whether it lives or dies.

dobyblue

06-20-07, 08:03 PM

You can say WHATEVER you want to make you sleep better at nights. The reviewer did notice a difference ...thats all that matters. We are on a video enthusiasts site are we not? Why bother spending thousands of dollars on equipment then if you are not bothered with a "slight" difference? Given a choice between pictures, I will choose the sharper image every day of the week.

So now the PQ horse died since Blu-ray surpassed HD DVD. Its funny how it was still alive back when Blu-ray just got started as a format.

It's true - read old much's posts over on high def digest from last October.
He was constantly touting how Fox and/or Disney were going neutral and how the PQ on HD DVD was better than Blu-ray and this was shown by the reviews and the scores that T5E and HoFD were getting and the DVD Wars sites, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.

Murch - if you seriously think that Universal have been doing a good job of late, you need to take a vacation. I'm sure Toshiba will oblige.

SyHD

06-20-07, 08:06 PM

hmurchison

06-20-07, 08:09 PM

I am glad you can rationalize your choice of, by all indications, a dying format. Please don't assume too much of me. I picked Blu-ray because its technically superior and has more studio support. I think I chose wisely. :D

Indeed it's is technically superior in total storage (for now) and bandwidth. It is woefull inferior in interactivity and platform specification (mandatory features). The content advantage is contrived.

Whether I chose wisely or not is irrelevant to the world at large but it works for me and if Blu-ray works for you then don't need affirmation boosts like the doobyblue PQ thread.

Phloyd

06-20-07, 08:33 PM

Do you have a list of the movies reviewed? Since Blu-ray concentrates more on newer titles, that wouldn't surprise me. Judging the overall PQ of a format with mostly new titles (BR) versus those with a lot of older titles (HD-DVD) isn't really fair.

Nobody was considering it unfair to blast the image quality of The Fifth Element, which was not a recent movie by any means.

Yet many of the recent HD DVD releases equal the 3/5 picture rating on High Def Digest.

I think it is fair to criticise Universal for this.

Phloyd

06-20-07, 08:36 PM

It is woefull inferior in interactivity

This is some kind of joke?

HD DVD is woeful in basic interactivity. The lack of PiP is nothing when you can't even jump to a time code.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to frame forward?

Talk to me about interactivity when HD DVD fixes these basic DVD features. I would bet profile 1.1 discs are out before we see basic interactivity in HD DVD.

Phloyd

06-20-07, 08:39 PM

Doby have these scores been matched up so that we're counting only releases that occur on both platforms?

How would that make any sense?

Warner encodes are identical. Paramounts are close to identical.

Sony and Disney have been releasing high quality audio video and Universal has not.

There ends the lesson.

eightninesuited

06-20-07, 08:46 PM

Fact of the matter is, Sony and Disney have been upping their game, whereas Universal has been dropping.

WayneL

06-20-07, 08:49 PM

SQ is so subjective that I think the reviewers might give extra points for PCM. :rolleyes: Totalling PQ and SQ is adding apples and oranges. I don't think there can be any correlation in perceptive scales between the two senses. If they don't track exactly, a perceptible change of 1.0 in one sense may correlate with 0.5 in the other. (the ratings are in 1/2 star resolution)

ack_bk

06-20-07, 08:56 PM

Wow, I cannot believe the spin that is going on in this thread by people with red-blinders on. Doby took the time to put together third party reviews across multiple sites and the results are the results. It does not take a genius to realize that Universal is simply cranking out as many catalog releases as they can and overall quality is taking a back seat. The same people that were quick to scrutinize Blu-Ray releases less than a year ago for the same flaws we are seeing with Universal's transfers seem very keen to turn a blind eye.

I was able to cancel "The Game" before it shipped to me, and I recently blind bought "Sneakers". It now appears that "Sneakers" is a three star release, and although better than the DVD version, clearly is not up to my expectations. I complained when we were getting poor Blu-Ray releases, and I am complaining now about poor HD DVD releases. I am an equal opportunity scrutinizer.

In the end, Universal may be cranking out catalog releases faster than the BDA, but these mediocre Universal catalog releases are going to hurt HD DVD's image. I would much rather see a balance between solid consistent transfers (4 stars and higher) and number of releases.

Numanoid101

06-20-07, 08:58 PM

Nobody was considering it unfair to blast the image quality of The Fifth Element, which was not a recent movie by any means.

Yet many of the recent HD DVD releases equal the 3/5 picture rating on High Def Digest.

I think it is fair to criticise Universal for this.

First, the age of the movie has no bearing on the quality of the transfer and the overall HD optical delivery. It's the quality of the master that matters most. It's true, that with age, comes less than pristine copies. But you're calling a movie that's 10 years old "not a recent movie", well what about The Sting (35 years old), The Deer Hunter (29 years old), and Casablanca (65 years old?) Do they get breaks as well for being 3-6 times older than the title you mention?

Regardless, the thing about T5E is that it was a reference quality DVD, meaning we KNOW the master is in excellent shape. It was the transfer that sucked ass.

Sisko197

06-20-07, 09:02 PM

Each person should be doing their own comparisons. I happen to be one of the many millions who are not color blind. Why is that a factor? Because....what Kenneth Brown and Peter Bracke see throw their biological ocular apparatus is different than what I see.

The goal of a movie or audio review is to find a reviewer that most closely approximates the tastes that you embody yourslf. Thus if I find that Bracke's top flight mega PQ movies all match mine then I know we are closely aligned. But if you have disagreements with the relative quality of a move then Bracke's reviews will have a lesser effect on your ability to guess the PQ.

When Doby attempts to create a thread and states that Blu-ray HD DVD or whatever is more consistent in delivering high quality movies it's fallacious at best.

1. If you're not comparing the same releases then you haven't normalized anything.

2. Since you haven't paired movie releases you have variable that wreck your data. Merely taking the last 10 movies does not help as Blu-ray may have their last 10 movie engender an avg age of 3 years whilst HD DVD's last 10 may be over a decade old.

Of course recent releases are going to look good.

This "scientific" breakdown wouldn't cut muster in a middle school science project. It's platform jingoism and frankly insulting to some.

Moving past all the angst, I think this thread has a place. It may not scientifically prove that BD > HD DVD, but what it does do is highlight that most BD buyers will be looking at a library that looks overall better than HD DVD's. This is not to say that it's fair or that BD doesn't focus on the newer titles while Universal focuses as of late on their catalog titles. It is true. A lot of BD's greatest picture and sound quality comes from the fact that they have a lot of newer releases like Apocalypto and POTC 2. Comparing that to a lower budget comedy like 40 Year Old Virgin or a catalog title like Bruce Almighty may seem unfair and in a strictly number to number analysis to prove one format superior to another, it is. It's also subject to rapid changes at even the slightest change in procedures.

For example, if this had been done last year, Universal would rank much higher than it does now. It is digging very deep in the barrell to find the titles it's releasing today and it does seem to be doing less work on making these older titles look as good as, say, The Mummy or The Mummy Returns.

So I agree that on the one hand, we can't say this makes or does not make one format superior to another period. However, we can say that for the time being this represents the quality of releases on each format and what each format offers the consumer. This is not a conversation about what content is or is not on the format. It is a conversation of what quality average exists for the content that DOES exist on that format.

In that, I think it's acceptable and probably useful to a few. Most will know what movies they want to watch and will be able to make their decisions based on that. But there might be a few who really want to know what format has a higher average of encodes, regardless of what the content is, and for that this can be helpful. I know plenty that bought The Hulk after all. God, what an awful movie. This is the type that might want to know which format has more of the eye candy or the ear candy.

I also take exception to the fact that you behave as though offended that HD DVD has never had a review score average thread or that last year there were literally hundreds of threads comparing King Kong or Batman Begins to The Fifth Element or Ultraviolet and saying, "You see. There is no picture quality advantage. HD DVD looks better!" That was based entirely on codec choice, no cross comparisons of movies in those early threads and I wonder... did you ever once make the same criticism in those threads that you've made in this one? Did you say, "This makes no difference, different movies mean different encodes, apples to oranges!" Or did you just nod your head and agree that yes that proves exactly what you believed before you opened the thread that one side had better quality than another?

See, I agree that it is an apples to oranges comparison good only for giving overall understanding of what overall very general quality can be expected on the format. He even broke it down by studio. I like that. It's good info to have. That it reduces WB and Universal to inferior quality when compared to the BD exclusive studios Sony and Disney/BVHE, that seems to be what really bothers you. Yes, they release newer titles to take advantage of high def. So what? We're talking quality of image and sound here, not the content themselves. That's another thread altogether that decides what movies are available and whether you like them.

See reasonable people don't say, "Those numbers mean nothing because this OTHER data is all that matters." That seems biased considering all that was said in the past in as far as all the declarations of HD DVD's supposed superiority. Reasonable people say, "Okay, now I take those numbers and I compare it TO the other data and use THAT to make my decision on what I want or don't want."

Personally, I think your problem is that it really shows HD DVD in a bad light. The two best content providers (2 of 3) are now nearing bottom rung on BD. Is this because of the titles they choose to release or because they are creating HD DVD's at HD DVD acceptable rates? It doesn't really matter, though. Because that's not the issue that is being compared with this data. If that's what you think this is for, then perhaps people are just misusing the data.

This data is good for only one thing: representing what overall video and sound quality is available to BD consumers and what is available to HD DVD consumers. Do not make the mistake of using it to say one format is better than another because one can't say that without considering other factors like cost, availability, movie content available, and hardware or technical problems or advantages.

But let's be clear. If Sony or Disney decide to release only newer titles to maximize audio and video quality OR if Sony or Disney decide to release only newer titles because that's what the consumer seems to prefer to buy, THEN those titles are STILL what is available on BD and still increase the perceived quality of releases for that format to the consumer. So the data IS useful. Just not the be-all, end-all of the format war.

And it IS interesting to see HD DVD falling off as time goes on. There was a time when Universal releases, even the older titles, were being praised. No longer. I do not believe that this is all to do with what titles they are releasing. I do believe there is a noticable drop in work being done on their transfers. I've seen it with Liar, Liar and Bruce Almighty. Hell, I think 40 Year Old Virgin looked pretty poor and that's a fairly recent movie. If the movies were "shot poorly," then that doesn't change what the consumer perceives (ie., this data) and even if we believed that, I'd wonder why the older movies and comedies from last year looked so much better despite similar age and genre. Was it Universal cherry picking the best looking movies last year? If so, then I suppose that makes it okay for Sony and Disney to do it this year when Universal was last year. Given that we can also excuse Sony and Disney's releases as "poorly shot movies," right? Since that's what one does when a transfer comes out that is not very good for Universal, I don't see why we can't apply the same logic to other studios.

Personally, I think the excuses are better left out of data. A title either looks good or it doesn't. If it was shot poorly, it'll always look poor. So be it. BD had its quality diminished last year and the overall numbers should include those old mpeg2 releases, some of which were VERY poor. Meanwhile, more troubling is that HD DVD's poorer releases come over a year later. It is the trend that bothers me, not the number score.

Here's hoping Universal starts caring again.

Numanoid101

06-20-07, 09:12 PM

Honestly, the bottom line is that these reviews are worthless. Just like the tier ratings. Go and read pretty much ANY review for a movie in the theater and you will notice 2 things. They never rate "picture quality" in their reviews. They may make a note of film effects and choices the director made to augment the display of the film.

I know that many, if not most, people on this forum are all about specs and rating things, but it's folly. I can't comment on BD films because I don't follow what is being released, but there are quite a few HD DVD movies that are stylistic and should not jump out at you like POTC or King Kong.

For the people here who can't understand this, I truly pity. You're often totally missing the point of your hobby.

I will concede that there ARE bad transfers on both formats.

Phloyd

06-20-07, 09:18 PM

First, the age of the movie has no bearing on the quality of the transfer and the overall HD optical delivery. It's the quality of the master that matters most. It's true, that with age, comes less than pristine copies. But you're calling a movie that's 10 years old "not a recent movie", well what about The Sting (35 years old), The Deer Hunter (29 years old), and Casablanca (65 years old?) Do they get breaks as well for being 3-6 times older than the title you mention?

I agree that the HD transfer from the flim master is key.

Fifth Element and Liar Liar were released in the same year and both get 3/5 for image quality.

And we have seen movies that are a lot older get much better treatment, so we know that better is possible.

I am not sure we disagree here.

What was your point again? Why should we not criticise Liar Liar with equal vigor?

dobyblue

06-20-07, 09:18 PM

Some classic Murchism's.

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=3580&postcount=34
What about when there are 1 million HD DVD players next summer? (2007)
Xmas 2007 I plan to purchase Pixar films in HD DVD format.
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=3616&postcount=43
Disney will follow the money.
Then three days later...
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=4111&postcount=7
I'm about animated out.
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=4845&postcount=2
HD DVD has really closed the mindshare gap. There are groups of people who now prefer it to Blu-ray. What a turn of events. I expect Toshiba to pour on the juice next year with new partnerships and Microsoft should eventually move to HD DVD integrated Xbox 360s.

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=4936&postcount=4
I'm just waiting for Microsoft to announce sales numbers. I'll likely have to wait until after Christmas but 200k numbers wouldn't surprise me.
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=4938&postcount=9Blu-ray was designed for MPEG2.
One of my faves, quoting me.
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=6671&postcount=45Blu-ray's PQ is not equal. You can't discount the bunch of crappy titles they've put out. They still exist and in the case of Robocop Sony actually had to pull the title because it looked so crappy.

Unfortunately regarding Audio...consumers are least concerned with stuff like LPCM tracks. HD DVD has the edge in Interactive features and extras as well. Factor in lower pricing and you have a format that Blu-ray will never catch.
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=7176&postcount=18
Have you noticed how desperate Blu-ray fans have gotten? 6 months ago they strolled around..nose up in the air staring down at the HD DVD peasants. My how things have changed. While we provide solid data about player and media sales they concoct boorish elementary level arguments to justify their views on a format that is struggling. I get a good laugh at this stuff.
Murch talking about how Blu-ray will lose 2 studios at CES 2007.
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=7818&postcount=14
Feel free to call me a liar after CES 2007. If I had meant "today" I would have said Blu-ray lost 2 studios.
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=8209&postcount=43
Um that clue would be the Neilsen, Amazon and Videoscan number which show Blu-ray getting stomped.
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=9867&postcount=20
dobyblue...man wake up you're delerious like Eddie Murphy here.

Case in point #1

Lionsgate is moving to VC-1 in 2007 for titles. Why would they do this? This means they are likely using Microsoft encoding tools and guess what format Microsoft supports?

Case in point #2

Disney's Bob Iger has already stated that he eventually thought that Disney would support both platforms. Now I know he's only a lowly CEO but that raises enough of a doubt in my mind that they are hardcore Blu-ray.
Truthfully though the whole situation is pathetic. Studios are about delivering their content and making a profit. There's no reason why any of these studios cannot deliver on both platfroms and make a nice profit. Nope...dirty politics seizes the day again.

Keep on spinning buddy.

Phloyd

06-20-07, 09:22 PM

I will concede that there ARE bad transfers on both formats.

Sure there are, and I think the point of this thread is to raise concern about the general trend we are seeing where Universal is moving towards swags of '5th Element' style releases using old transfers just to meet some contractual obligation or to avoid being called liars or something.

It is not good for anyone, regardless of which side of the fence you currently sit.

drsiebling

06-20-07, 09:33 PM

ack_bk

06-20-07, 09:53 PM

Fact of the matter is, Sony and Disney have been upping their game, whereas Universal has been dropping.

Exactly. Even Fox seems to have higher PQ scores than Universal right now.

I think reality is starting to set in for Universal. Looking at the Nielsen data released by Home Media Magazine last week, it was interesting to see that Universal did not have one single title in the Top 20 HD Sellers list for 2007. That really surprised me. When you look at the cold hard data for Universal and HD DVD it does not get any better. HD DVD has not won one single week all year in sales per the Nielsen data. HD DVD started the year off with a lead in Since Inception sales for movies and Blu-Ray has quickly surpassed them and they gain more ground every week. Universal's catalog titles are not selling well when you look at the Top HD sellers and Top HD DVD sellers.

I think Universal is trying to push as much product out the door at HD DVD before they go neutral (which I think will be 2008, unless HD DVD can mount a huge comeback).

Numanoid101

06-20-07, 10:11 PM

Sure there are, and I think the point of this thread is to raise concern about the general trend we are seeing where Universal is moving towards swags of '5th Element' style releases using old transfers just to meet some contractual obligation or to avoid being called liars or something.

It is not good for anyone, regardless of which side of the fence you currently sit.

If that's how the reviews worked, then yes I agree the ratings would have merit (as a "show this to wow people" scale). If it specifically mentions macroblocking or compression artifacts then that's clearly a limitation of the media and not the intent of the filmmaker or a limitation of the master.

However, Lost in Translation is a perfect example of the title getting a lower quality rating when there it didn't deserve it based on the criteria above.

The major complaints were that the transfer was inconsistent and that grain was present. This wasn't the fault of the media OR the transfer, it was the the way the film was made (not necessarily intentionally.)

Does it deserve a 3 out of 5 compared to POTC in WOW factor? Yes. Does the 3 mean that HD DVD is inferior to Blu-Ray? No, but the OP is clearly stating otherwise.

It would be like watching both LiT and POTC in the theater and then saying "POTC was so much sharper, clearly Blu Ray is better than HD DVD." :confused:

Again, there are exceptions and woefully bad transfers, but they are the exception not the rule.

Numanoid101

06-20-07, 10:14 PM

I agree that the HD transfer from the flim master is key.

Fifth Element and Liar Liar were released in the same year and both get 3/5 for image quality.

And we have seen movies that are a lot older get much better treatment, so we know that better is possible.

I am not sure we disagree here.

What was your point again? Why should we not criticise Liar Liar with equal vigor?

Well then we agree. You introduced the "time" argument by comparing an "old" movie that scored a 3 to a recent movie that scored a 3. I merely said that age doesn't matter.

Brien

06-20-07, 10:15 PM

Y'know doby, you could probably blame Universal's craptastic releases for the switch. ;)

ack_bk

06-20-07, 10:21 PM

If that's how the reviews worked, then yes I agree the ratings would have merit (as a "show this to wow people" scale). If it specifically mentions macroblocking or compression artifacts then that's clearly a limitation of the media and not the intent of the filmmaker or a limitation of the master.

However, Lost in Translation is a perfect example of the title getting a lower quality rating when there it didn't deserve it based on the criteria above.

The major complaints were that the transfer was inconsistent and that grain was present. This wasn't the fault of the media OR the transfer, it was the the way the film was made (not necessarily intentionally.)

Does it deserve a 3 out of 5 compared to POTC in WOW factor? Yes. Does the 3 mean that HD DVD is inferior to Blu-Ray? No, but the OP is clearly stating otherwise.

It would be like watching both LiT and POTC in the theater and then saying "POTC was so much sharper, clearly Blu Ray is better than HD DVD." :confused:

Again, there are exceptions and woefully bad transfers, but they are the exception not the rule.

I agree with what you are saying, but I am sure we will find this exact issue across both formats and will most likely be balanced out across the scores since both formats have roughly the same number of releases and reviews.

In the case with many of Universal's recent releases it still feels "rushed" to me, and I am sure there are processes to clean up the master and spend more time with the encode. Of course this requires more money and time, and I am sure this is part of the problem. All the same, the general public is not really a factor in this war yet. The people who are currently buying movies in HD are early adopters and people who are into home theater and HD. At the end of the day quite a few folks (myself included) are not going to drop $20 for a movie that is only marginally better than the $5-10 DVD version of said movie. It is hard enough double dipping as it is, but I will not do it for a marginally better version of the DVD. And this applies to both formats equally for me.

krinkle

06-20-07, 10:23 PM

Numanoid101

06-20-07, 10:31 PM

I agree with what you are saying, but I am sure we will find this exact issue across both formats and will most likely be balanced out across the scores since both formats have roughly the same number of releases and reviews.

In the case with many of Universal's recent releases it still feels "rushed" to me, and I am sure there are processes to clean up the master and spend more time with the encode. Of course this requires more money and time, and I am sure this is part of the problem. All the same, the general public is not really a factor in this war yet. The people who are currently buying movies in HD are early adopters and people who are into home theater and HD. At the end of the day quite a few folks (myself included) are not going to drop $20 for a movie that is only marginally better than the $5-10 DVD version of said movie. It is hard enough double dipping as it is, but I will not do it for a marginally better version of the DVD. And this applies to both formats equally for me.

I haven't seen the recent uni releases, but I don't doubt that they aren't as good as earlier ones based on what people from both camps have been saying.

I also agree with you on the fact that both sides will have softer movies that aren't the fault of the respective technology so then it comes down to how many does each side have? Is it enough to make up fifteen hundredths of a star?

jaewon

06-20-07, 10:36 PM

Numanoid101

06-20-07, 10:46 PM

You are right that Lost in Translation is a grainy film. Which is why its too bad that they filtered it all out of the HDDVD:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10703871&&#post10703871

Yet here is a snippet from one HD DVD review:

Luckily, all is not lost. The heavy grain and noise that plagued the standard DVD is gone, and the print is nearly pristine. There is still a veil of grain (more visible in well-lit shots) but it doesn't distract like it did on the DVD.

Wonder if they thought the grain "plagued" the theatrical release.

Vincent Pereira

06-20-07, 10:57 PM

You are right that Lost in Translation is a grainy film. Which is why its too bad that they filtered it all out of the HDDVD:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10703871&&#post10703871

Doing the mouseover comparison, I see lots of MPEG noise in the HD broadcast version that's missing from the VC-1 HD-DVD, not film grain.

Vincent

Kilian.ca

06-20-07, 11:10 PM

People have said they've notice a general improvement in PQ of BD and these figures do give this impression but nothing more without a more vigorous analysis.

Let's leave aside review bias and other factors for a moment and just concentrate on the data. It's all very well to collect the data but merely showing the mean values (assuming they're what they're as shown) without appropriate statistical analysis isn't much good. ;)

And is it valid to 'average' out the PQ and SQ?

SyHD

06-20-07, 11:51 PM

I also see lots of detail thats missing from the VC-1 HD DVD.

Its quite clear VC-1 "blurs" all the grain out of the video. Compare to the broadcast video, the VC-1 encode looks out of focus. How could anyone see any other way is beyond me.

Dave-Blu-Ray

06-21-07, 12:14 AM

So, Blu-ray is not more expensive (the media is even cheaper), it delivers better quality and it has more players out and largely more support?

I know the winner for me, and for the most people out there.

Vincent Pereira

06-21-07, 12:19 AM

I also see lots of detail thats missing from the VC-1 HD DVD.

I don't see any "detail" missing. The broadcast MPEG version has artificially sharpened edges, but no extra detail that I can see. This was brought up in another comparison thread on here comparing the "soft" BD of THE FIFTH ELEMENT to the "sharper" broadcast version, and it was shown that the supposed "greater detail" of the broadcast version was nothing more than edge-enhancement.

Vincent

Vincent Pereira

06-21-07, 12:22 AM

Its quite clear VC-1 "blurs" all the grain out of the video. Compare to the broadcast video, the VC-1 encode looks out of focus. How could anyone see any other way is beyond me.

It's the difference between artificially sharpened edges and real detail. LOST IN TRANSLATION was always a "soft" film, that's how it was shot. The broadcast MPEG version has some artificial edge-enhancement applied, resulting in MPEG artifacts that some are mistaking for "grain" and sharpened ringing edges that others think is "detail" (i.e., the hard edge in the close-up of the teeth in that final screen cap). In actuality, the VC-1 encode has at least the same amount of detail, albeit without the edge-enhancement.

Vincent

briankmonkey

06-21-07, 12:26 AM

UxiSXRD

06-21-07, 12:35 AM

That there is some pwnage. :D

JackBee

06-21-07, 01:58 AM

Kram Sacul

06-21-07, 01:59 AM

I don't see any "detail" missing. The broadcast MPEG version has artificially sharpened edges, but no extra detail that I can see. This was brought up in another comparison thread on here comparing the "soft" BD of THE FIFTH ELEMENT to the "sharper" broadcast version, and it was shown that the supposed "greater detail" of the broadcast version was nothing more than edge-enhancement.

Yeah, that was my theory. Glad that you actually looked at the screenshots and came to the same conclusion that I did. Some people out there still think EE equals detail. ;)

As for the Lost in Translation screenshots, the HD-DVD is soft but is actually more detailed than the broadcast version because the artifacting is so bad. The electric signage shot is a good example of details being mangled by compression.

The "grain" in the elevator shot and the closeup of Scarlett is just compression noise.

fozziwig

06-21-07, 02:30 AM

:) Some classic Murchism's.

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=3580&postcount=34

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=3616&postcount=43

Then three days later...
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=4111&postcount=7

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=4845&postcount=2

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=4936&postcount=4

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=4938&postcount=9
One of my faves, quoting me.
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=6671&postcount=45
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=7176&postcount=18

Murch talking about how Blu-ray will lose 2 studios at CES 2007.
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=7818&postcount=14

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=8209&postcount=43

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=9867&postcount=20

Keep on spinning buddy.

http://75.126.103.40/images/hd_data/applause.gif

BRAVO! MORE! ENCORE!

Take a bow dobyblue.

And very nice work on the review archive. Greatly appreciated.

Phloyd

06-21-07, 02:36 AM

However, Lost in Translation is a perfect example of the title getting a lower quality rating when there it didn't deserve it based on the criteria above.

This might fly if it was an isolated incident.

However it is not.

What we have is a trend, and not the trend where Universal has decided to only release artistically crappy looking movies.

Was Bruce Almighty (3/5) shot to look arty? How old is that movie? Is there any excuse for a poor looking disc of this title?

Grubert

06-21-07, 04:37 AM

Exactly.

Just look at this comment in the review of Liar Liar on Highdefdigest:

Unfortunately, this seems to be part of a larger trend for Universal and its recent catalogue titles -- while some (like 'Born on the Fourth of July') have been better than others thanks to more recent DVD remasters, overall the studio's catalogue releases have seemed rushed to the high-def market with re-heated transfers that were originally produced for earlier standard-def DVD releases.

It doesn't take an economist to determine that the studio is probably just trying to keep the number of titles available on HD DVD neck-and-neck with the number of Blu-ray titles being released. But while this may make sense as a competitive business strategy, Universal is arguably shooting itself in the foot with the most passionate early adopters by not taking the time to deliver product that truly showcases the advantages of high definition. After all, what's the point of spending all the extra money to replace your standard DVD collection when the studio hasn't taken the prep time to make the high-def edition look its best?

'Liar Liar' could've looked amazing with some extra time and work, but as presented here it is a perfect example of a dangerous mentality. An average transfer adds quantity to the list of HD DVD titles, but it doesn't add quality. To be clear, as a dual-format supporter, I have no personal stake in one format over the other, but as early adopters who've made a significant investment in one (or both) of the high-def disc formats, we should all be demanding that the studios deliver the very best product available, regardless of the competitive environment.

Jim Morrison

06-21-07, 05:14 AM

Urza

06-21-07, 08:32 AM

briankmonkey

06-21-07, 10:41 AM

Josh Z

06-21-07, 11:34 AM

Ouch! Pwnage!

And yet another AVS thread degenerates to a pissing match between 13 year-olds. Great. Just great.

Is there anywhere left on the internet where adults can have a rational, civilized conversation?

Andrew P

06-21-07, 11:52 AM

And yet another AVS thread degenerates to a pissing match between 13 year-olds. Great. Just great.

Is there anywhere left on the internet where adults can have a rational, civilized conversation?

Nope. Not on this forum anymore. One of the reasons I post and check less and less with each passing day.

MichaelHDDVD

06-21-07, 12:07 PM

like others have said, lossless vs compressed codecs is the reason for the the discrepancy in sq ratings. video has started to go blu as well with universal churning out catalog title after catalog title without really giving each one the proper care needed. while this may help match up total titles available vs blu-ray, the quality department is really taking a dive as a result as u basically have one studio trying to match the number of titles output by several studios.

No, lossless v. uncompressed isn't the reason for the difference in SQ. Lossy v. uncompressed is the reason for it. Blu-Ray titles have PCM much more frequently that HD DVD has TrueHD.

xbdestroya

06-21-07, 12:15 PM

dobyblue

06-21-07, 12:23 PM

Is there anywhere left on the internet where adults can have a rational, civilized conversation?

Have you tried Internet2? :D

desmond212

06-21-07, 12:23 PM

product quality has definitely gone up on the bd side aside from wb. i hope that they maintain the current level of excellence in the future...

dobyblue

06-21-07, 12:27 PM

The static in the thread aside, I think that this is an insightful list Doby has compiled; it is based on what represents a pretty statistically broad sampling, and the results are what they are. Why BD is enjoying better average PQ is certainly debatable - but what's harder to debate is that it is.

I think it's worth noting also that the bottom half of the PQ studio perps are composed mainly of the VC-1 advocates. We all know that VC-1 can yield great results, but it'd be nice if it stopped being held up as some sort of miracle codec by certain posters; recent Universal VC-1 encodes hold no advantage over the original BD MPEG-2 efforts, and there was a time here when such would have been viewed as unforgivable. The only difference is that HD DVDs PQ 'superiority' and BD's (negative) MPEG-2 associations have been ingrained in many peoples heads over the course of 2006. But it's not 2006 anymore.

I agree, this year old mindset still seems to be at the forefront of people's arguments, to the point where we have to try and blow up individual frames of movies to argue.

One of the main reasons I started tallying the reviews was to see whether or not HD DVD did in fact have consistently better PQ and as it turns out, with the exception of a handful of June 2006 titles and titles like Robocop that never even got released, it doesn't.

People seem to forget that most of the old titles come from Warner and they're on both formats. I don't think anyone will begrudge HD DVD having only 5/5 PQ Casablanca for pulling the ratings down that's for sure.

Sony and BVHE have stepped it up and Universal have to be not taking the time with their encodes because we all know they're capable of high quality HD getting 4.5 and 5 for PQ. I'm not sure what other explanation there is for such similar PQ ratings across the five review sites I watch.

WayneL

06-21-07, 12:31 PM

I track all the reviews from 5 websites AND then place them by studio too.
That's all the work I need thanks. :)

INcidentally the total PQ/SQ by studio is quite surprising as of June 18th, 2007.

Total Studio
4.27 Buena Vista
4.00 Sony
3.96 Fox
3.93 Paramount
3.80 Warner
3.75 Lionsgate
3.74 Universal
3.71 Weinstein
Can you give this by PQ only, and add the number of titles by each studio? Might tell us something about effect of quantity production and codecs

digicam95

06-21-07, 12:39 PM

Can you give this by PQ only, and add the number of titles by each studio? Might tell us something about effect of quantity production and codecs

Yeah, it would be great if we can find the average rating based on the codec used for mastering.

UxiSXRD

06-21-07, 12:43 PM

Sony and BVHE have stepped it up and Universal have to be not taking the time with their encodes because we all know they're capable of high quality HD getting 4.5 and 5 for PQ.

Do we really know that, though? Their biggest problem has been their titles at the theaters for the last few years, with one or two exceptions IMO, while the BDA studios have had a relative plethora of High Def worthy titles. The Box Office results seem to correlate to the same proportions, as well.

dobyblue

06-21-07, 12:47 PM

Can you give this by PQ only, and add the number of titles by each studio? Might tell us something about effect of quantity production and codecs

Please read back through the thread and you'll find the PQ and SQ broken down seperately.

Frode

06-21-07, 12:55 PM

While I will agree that the MPEG2 broadcast version of LiT has a ton of compression artifacting that's really bad, the VC1 version is rather soft and the line details blur into each other. It's evident in the sign shot where the 田 in くぼ田 for instance is more delineated. I can see it in other parts of the text bleeding into each other as well. There's most likely more to gain by using a higher bitrate and less filtering.

dobyblue

06-21-07, 12:55 PM

Looking at Blu-ray discs only, and I'm not keeping this one up to date, it was merely to address some misinformation that rdjam was posting, as of around April 25th there was the following.

Of 680 reviews: 431 MPEG-2, 125 AVC/MPEG-4, 124 VC-1
Average star rating

1) 4.22 stars AVC/MPEG-4
2) 3.94 stars VC-1
3) 3.78 stars MPEG-2

For the current June 18th spreadsheet the reviews per studio are:

Warner 389
Universal 293
Sony 209
Paramount 189
Fox 138
BVHE 136
Lions Gate 59
Weinstein 44

The studio chart is as follows, ranked by PQ.

PQ SQ Total Studio
4.17 4.37 4.27 Buena Vista
4.02 3.84 3.93 Paramount
3.98 3.63 3.80 Warner
3.91 4.10 4.00 Sony
3.84 4.08 3.96 Fox
3.80 3.63 3.71 Weinstein
3.79 3.69 3.74 Universal
3.65 3.85 3.75 Lionsgate

HPforMe

06-21-07, 12:59 PM

I noticed that 'The Queen' is listed in the Blu Ray reviews. I didn't think that was even released for Blu Ray yet. Sd yes but not Blu Ray.

Issac Hunt

06-21-07, 01:11 PM

dobyblue

06-21-07, 01:12 PM

I noticed that 'The Queen' is listed in the Blu Ray reviews. I didn't think that was even released for Blu Ray yet. Sd yes but not Blu Ray.

It was released on Blu-ray with VC-1 encoding by BVHE. It got 4/5 for PQ pretty much across the boards.

tgable

06-21-07, 01:13 PM

I noticed that 'The Queen' is listed in the Blu Ray reviews. I didn't think that was even released for Blu Ray yet. Sd yes but not Blu Ray.

Netflix says available now in my queue.

ack_bk

06-21-07, 01:13 PM

I noticed that 'The Queen' is listed in the Blu Ray reviews. I didn't think that was even released for Blu Ray yet. Sd yes but not Blu Ray.
Nope it was released day and date I believe. I own it in Blu-Ray and it is a terrific transfer with a lossless soundtrack.

briankmonkey

06-21-07, 01:21 PM

Originally Posted by Josh Z
And yet another AVS thread degenerates to a pissing match between 13 year-olds. Great. Just great.

fantastic statement coming from you :rolleyes:

Is there anywhere left on the internet where adults can have a rational, civilized conversation?

Why so you can go there to teach the ways of double talk :eek:

WayneL

06-21-07, 01:26 PM

So
PQ Qty Studio
4.17 136 Buena Vista
4.02 189 Paramount
3.98 389 Warner
3.91 209 Sony
3.84 138 Fox
3.80 44 Weinstein
3.79 293 Universal
3.65 59 Lionsgate

Can anyone see a pattern here? Remember, ratings are given in 1/2 star resolution

Edit: sorry, that's what I get for rushing. I want the number of titles if possible. Don't think there's any pattern to be seen with this

xbdestroya

06-21-07, 01:30 PM

Can anyone see a pattern here?

Go ahead and tell us.

gandley

06-21-07, 01:37 PM

thanks dolby for the time you have spent, if you were tracking just 1 or 2 sites i think i would take issue with th results. But givin i think you said 5 sites worth of ratings any glitches should balance out.

As an owner of both formats, your results pretty much match what im seeing.

I still hear people talk how HD-DVD is consistantly better, they claim blind buying is fine as you know it will be good, but that has not matched my experience. At launch HD-DVD was much more like this, but sadly now they dont have the time and luxary to pamper every encode.

Im somwhat dissapointed at universal, they ARE the majour reason to buy HD-DVD, well, this is not what i expect from tier 1 studio. more so after they have proven to be one of the best for PQ.

I will wait untill after Q4, but at this time HD-DVD for me is getting close to the recycling centre.

desmond212

06-21-07, 01:45 PM

I still hear people talk how HD-DVD is consistantly better, they claim blind buying is fine as you know it will be good, but that has not matched my experience. At launch HD-DVD was much more like this, but sadly now they dont have the time and luxary to pamper every encode.

amen. don't care what format but blind buying is never a good policy. quality is just not that consistent.

WayneL

06-21-07, 01:48 PM

Isn't Universal doing a lot of catalog? Obviously they would be lower.

hmurchison

06-21-07, 02:32 PM

Some classic Murchism's.

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=3580&postcount=34

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=3616&postcount=43

Then three days later...
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=4111&postcount=7

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=4845&postcount=2

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=4936&postcount=4

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=4938&postcount=9
One of my faves, quoting me.
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=6671&postcount=45
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=7176&postcount=18

Murch talking about how Blu-ray will lose 2 studios at CES 2007.
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=7818&postcount=14

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=8209&postcount=43

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showpost.php?p=9867&postcount=20

Keep on spinning buddy.

What about when there are 1 million HD DVD players next summer? (2007)
Xmas 2007 I plan to purchase Pixar films in HD DVD format.

Although Toshiba revised numbers for 2007 they should hit 1 million players by end of 2007. I can deal with being 6 months off. I'll get to Disney later.

Disney will follow the money. "I'm all about animated out
I'm not wrong here. Disney is following the money. They're choosing the format that purportedly offers the most piracy protection yet publically pretending that they've chosen Blu-ray for more benevolent reasoning. I am tired of animated flicks. Don't know why you quoted that it's purely a subjtive thing.

HD DVD has really closed the mindshare gap. There are groups of people who now prefer it to Blu-ray. What a turn of events. I expect Toshiba to pour on the juice next year with new partnerships and Microsoft should eventually move to HD DVD integrated Xbox 360s.

HD-A2 ranked 131 in Electronics (http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HD-A2-HD-DVD-Player/dp/B000IJV4BC******pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6073193-6838425?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1182444116&sr=8-1)

HD-A20 ranked 335 in Electronics
(http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HD-A20-1080p-DVD-Player/dp/B000MKC34E******pd_bbs_2/002-6073193-6838425?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1182444116&sr=8-2)

HD-XA2 ranked 518 in Electronics (http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HD-XA2-1080p-HD-DVD-Player/dp/B000M6XKEK******pd_bbs_sr_3/002-6073193-6838425?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1182444116&sr=8-3)

BP-P1200 Blu-ray ranked 837 in Electronics (http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-BD-P1200-Blu-Ray-Disc-Player/dp/B000NEJYVO******sr_1_35/002-6073193-6838425?ie=UTF8&s=audio-video&qid=1182444416&sr=1-35)

Sounds like some "mindshare gaps" have closed when the whole Toshiba HD DVD lineup outsells the best selling standalone Blu-ray. I whiffed on the Xbox integrated drive. That's Microsoft's folly..the Elite 360 is overpriced IMO as compared to a PS3.

I'm just waiting for Microsoft to announce sales numbers. I'll likely have to wait until after Christmas but 200k numbers wouldn't surprise me.

I believe the numbers by the end of 2006 were $75k add on sales in NA with 40+ more in Europe. Searching Google for accurate data is nigh impossible.

Blu-ray was designed for MPEG2.

It's well known that Blu-ray started life as a recording format in Japan using only MPEG-2 and sporting 23GB discs.

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/Sony-ships-blu-ray-23GB-Professional-Disc-for-Data-drives-and-media.html

I'm not wrong here. The format was designed initially as a MPEG-2 only format.

Blu-ray's PQ is not equal. You can't discount the bunch of crappy titles they've put out. They still exist and in the case of Robocop Sony actually had to pull the title because it looked so crappy.

December 2006. This is prior to the release of top flight movies like The Prestige and PotC. A normal human can infer that that discussion is relevant only at that time period. Both formats have delivered stellar movies but in December of 2006 HD DVD had a decided advantage in the amount of movies with high PQ.

Feel free to call me a liar after CES 2007. If I had meant "today" I would have said Blu-ray lost 2 studios...Um that clue would be the Neilsen, Amazon and Videoscan number which show Blu-ray getting stomped.

Yup I blew the studio thing. The primary reports of LGF and Disney going neutral came from a poster here and although it made sense hindsight shows that HD movie sales being miniscule and AACS holes likely had a negative effect on any studio movement. At that time Videoscan numbers had HD DVD sales comfortably in the lead. Let's not attempt to rewrite history here. HD DVD had a good lead in movie sales last Holiday season.

Disney's Bob Iger has already stated that he eventually thought that Disney would support both platforms. Now I know he's only a lowly CEO but that raises enough of a doubt in my mind that they are hardcore Blu-ray.

Iger "did" say those comments. Now that he's singing a different tune isn't a reflection negatively on me but him. Fool me once shame on you. I now know Iger will change his tune like a Leopard changes spots. He's an Executive which means he's prone to lying. No skin off my teeth.

You may call it spin but I stand by the fact that your "Blu-ray PQ is more consistent than HD DVD" is accurate on only the most superficial level. It speaks more to the age of movies being announced than quality of the player. I've outlined why it is a bunk methodology and no one has provided suffienct reasoning on how your "Beakdown" means anything useful beyond avg reviewer scores for a collection of movies. An important variable like movie age isn't represented in your findings.

hmurchison

06-21-07, 02:35 PM

fantastic statement coming from you :rolleyes:

Why so you can go there to teach the ways of double talk :eek:

I don't know why you're attacking Josh Z his reputation here is of a neutral movie lover. You're reputation doesn't quite hold up to the same unbiased level. Brian your credibility outside of the Blu-ray forum areas is low. Keep that in mind when you decide to attack someone.

donricouga

06-21-07, 02:39 PM

HD-A2 ranked 131 in Electronics (http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HD-A2-HD-DVD-Player/dp/B000IJV4BC******pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6073193-6838425?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1182444116&sr=8-1)

HD-A20 ranked 335 in Electronics
(http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HD-A20-1080p-DVD-Player/dp/B000MKC34E******pd_bbs_2/002-6073193-6838425?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1182444116&sr=8-2)

HD-XA2 ranked 518 in Electronics (http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HD-XA2-1080p-HD-DVD-Player/dp/B000M6XKEK******pd_bbs_sr_3/002-6073193-6838425?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1182444116&sr=8-3)

BP-P1200 Blu-ray ranked 837 in Electronics (http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-BD-P1200-Blu-Ray-Disc-Player/dp/B000NEJYVO******sr_1_35/002-6073193-6838425?ie=UTF8&s=audio-video&qid=1182444416&sr=1-35)

Sounds like some "mindshare gaps" have closed when the whole Toshiba HD DVD lineup outsells the best selling standalone Blu-ray.

Thats funny, i'm showing the bdp-s300 at #439 in electronics which beats the XA2. For a while it was actually beating out the A20 as well.

hmurchison

06-21-07, 02:43 PM

Thats funny, i'm showing the bdp-s300 at #439 in electronics which beats the XA2. For a while it was actually beating out the A20 as well.

Thanks for the correction. I must have missed it in the list.

briankmonkey

06-21-07, 02:43 PM

I don't know why you're attacking Josh Z his reputation here is of a neutral movie lover. You're reputation doesn't quite hold up to the same unbiased level. Brian your credibility outside of the Blu-ray forum areas is low. Keep that in mind when you decide to attack someone.

I do find it amusing that Josh Z was the first person to attack anybody in this thread, but of course you're ok with that considering you attacked dobyblu not much later in the thread. :rolleyes:

so yes Josh Z is probably about as neutral as you I suppose ;) I guess for some odd reason I don't care if my reputation is low with HD-DVD fanatics/ex-Toshiba employees. Keep up the good work though, your credibility is at an all time high! :p

Andrew P

06-21-07, 02:52 PM

This thread is good for a laugh, but as far as any scientific value there is none. We cannot even agree that reviewers know the directors intent and now we throw their numbers into a spreadsheet and expect them to prove consistency.

I like reading reviews because they are fun, but ultimately I trust what I see. What looks good/bad to me may not be the same for everyone else and vice versa.

dobyblue

06-21-07, 03:25 PM

Isn't Universal doing a lot of catalog? Obviously they would be lower.

That doesn't seem to be hurting Warner who are putting out catalogue titles 20, 30 and 40 years older than the avergae Universal catalogue title. Didn't hurt Disney's Great Raid.

If you want the number of titles by studio hop on over to High Def Digest's previous release page -= they have them all listed by studios.

There's no relationship between number of titles released and rating, if that's what you're looking for.

Issac Hunt

06-21-07, 04:23 PM

I like reading reviews because they are fun, but ultimately I trust what I see. What looks good/bad to me may not be the same for everyone else and vice versa.
there's a lot of truth in that. there's even one reviewer who not only mistook upconverted sd for hd on disk, but has since recked his repution by refusing to admit his mistake. as you say: amusing...

HPforMe

06-21-07, 04:39 PM

Nope it was released day and date I believe. I own it in Blu-Ray and it is a terrific transfer with a lossless soundtrack.

Wow. I didn't know that. This is a must buy for me.

briankmonkey

06-21-07, 04:39 PM

Issac Hunt

06-21-07, 04:49 PM

ouch!

Josh Z

06-21-07, 04:54 PM

there's a lot of truth in that. there's even one reviewer who not only mistook upconverted sd for hd on disk, but has since recked his repution by refusing to admit his mistake. as you say: amusing...

My "repution" is peachy, thank you very much.

I said my peace and made my points as clearly as I could in that idiotic Traffic debate, and that's all I have to say about that. What absurd conspiracy theory you choose to believe instead is your own problem.

WayneL

06-21-07, 05:00 PM

That doesn't seem to be hurting Warner who are putting out catalogue titles 20, 30 and 40 years older than the avergae Universal catalogue title. Didn't hurt Disney's Great Raid.

If you want the number of titles by studio hop on over to High Def Digest's previous release page -= they have them all listed by studios.

There's no relationship between number of titles released and rating, if that's what you're looking for.
Umm can't find that page - help, anybody?

markrubin

06-21-07, 05:15 PM

Moderator

lots of reports on this thread: seems like some of the same bickering among a select few

This simply cannot continue: it is unacceptable :(

Bruuce

06-21-07, 05:16 PM

Blu-ray Previously released discs (http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/releasedates_historical.html)

HD DVD Previously released discs (http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/releasedates_historical.html)

DrDon

06-21-07, 05:18 PM

If you have an issue with a post, report it. Don't respond to it. It only makes matters worse. And it's a lot easier for us to prune one offensive post and suspend one member than to do five or six. Especially this close to happy hour.

WayneL

06-21-07, 07:34 PM

Blu-ray Previously released discs (http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/releasedates_historical.html)

HD DVD Previously released discs (http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/releasedates_historical.html)
Thanks - saw those. Not compiled, and I don't know if it correlates with DB's numbers anyway. He must have it, but seems unwilling to share.

dobyblue

06-21-07, 10:13 PM

Thanks - saw those. Not compiled, and I don't know if it correlates with DB's numbers anyway. He must have it, but seems unwilling to share.

Man it only takes a moment to scroll through and count each one.
That's exactly what I would have to do to give you the numbers anyway.
I'd be more than happy to e-mail you the entire spreadsheet - I'm not hiding or misrepresenting anything.

Every single scored review from those 5 sites is in my spreadsheet. If I wanted to hide something it would be those awful early reviews from Sony, including the 1 star review for unreleased Robocop, but no, they're all in there every single scored review.

dobyblue

06-27-07, 09:29 PM

Here's something interesting - the last 30 reviews grouped by studio.

FUD is defeated by FACT.

Universal
PQ Universal Title
4.50 The Hitcher
4.00 Eternal Sunshine
3.00 The River
3.50 Dragonheart
4.00 Breach
3.00 Bruce Almighty
3.00 Daylight
3.00 The Frighteners
3.50 Liar Liar
4.00 Breach
4.00 Born on the Fourth of July
3.50 Bruce Almighty
3.00 Meaning of Life
2.50 The 40yr Old Virgin
3.50 The Skeleton Key
3.50 Lost in Translation
2.50 Drgonheart
3.00 The Frighteners
3.00 Midnight Run
3.00 Liar Liar
3.00 Bruce Almighty
3.50 Smokey and The Bandit
3.50 Liar Liar
4.00 bruce Almighty
3.00 The Frighteners
3.50 Meaning of Life
3.50 The Skeleton Key
2.50 Midnight Run
4.00 The 40yr Old Virgin
3.00 Liar Liar
3.35 TOTALS

Weinstein
PQ Weinstein Title
4.00 Scary Movie 4
4.00 The Matador
2.50 Derailed
3.50 Clerks II
4.00 Pulse
3.50 Lucky Number Slevin
4.00 Clerks II
4.00 Derailed
4.00 Lucky # Slevin
4.50 The Matador
3.00 Pulse
3.50 Scary Movie 4
4.00 Wolf Creek
3.50 Lucky # Slevin
4.00 School for Scoundrels
4.00 Feast
4.00 Feast
4.00 School for Scoundrels
3.00 School for Scoundrels
3.00 Feast
3.00 Harsh Times
4.00 Black Christmas
4.00 Black Christmas
3.50 Harsh Times
4.50 Black Christmas
2.50 Harsh Times
3.50 Black Christmas
3.50 Feast
3.50 Harsh Times
4.00 School for Scoundrels
3.67 TOTALS

Warner
PQ Warner
4.50 Letters from Iwo Jima
4.00 The Fountain
3.50 The Road Warrior
4.00 The Road Warrior
4.00 Dog Day Afternoon
3.50 The Road Warriors
4.50 Battle of the Bulge
5.00 Ultimate Matrix Collection
3.00 Blood Diamond
4.00 Rio Bravo
4.00 The Cowboys
4.50 Music and Lyrics
4.00 Rio Bravo
4.00 The Cowboys
4.50 Music and Lyrics
4.00 Rio Bravo
3.50 The Cowboys
3.00 Blood Diamond
4.00 Rio Bravo
3.50 The Cowboys
4.00 The Road Warrior
4.50 Battle of the Bulge
3.00 Letters from Iwo Jima
4.00 Rio Bravo
3.00 Blood Diamond
4.00 The Fountain
4.50 Complete Matrix Trilogy
3.50 Rio Bravo
4.00 The Cowboys
4.00 Battle of the Bulge
3.92 TOTALS

Paramount

PQ Paramount
5.00 Flags of our Fathers
3.00 Norbit
4.50 Dreamgirls
4.00 Failure to Launch
4.50 Payback
4.50 Payback
4.50 Dreamgirls
4.00 Failure to Launch
4.00 Norbit
5.00 Dreamgirls
4.00 Failure to Launch
5.00 Mission Impossible
5.00 Mission Impossible 2
5.00 Flags of our Fathers
4.00 Freedom Fighters
4.50 Trading Places
4.50 Coming to America
4.00 Trading Places
3.00 Coming to America
4.50 The Warriors
3.50 Coming to America
4.50 The Warriors
3.50 The River
3.50 Mission Impossible
4.00 Freedom Writers
3.00 Coming to America
4.00 Trading Places
4.50 Freedom Writers
4.50 Flags of our Fathers
4.00 Norbit
4.18 TOTALS

Fox
PQ Fox Title
4.00 X3
4.00 The Omen
3.50 Speed
5.00 Devil Wears Prada
4.00 Rising Sun
5.00 Transporter 2
4.00 AVP
4.50 Men of Honor
3.00 Courage Under Fire
3.50 The Marine
3.00 Broken Arrow
3.50 Chain Reaction
4.00 Chain Reaction
4.00 Entrapment
3.50 The Sentinel
4.00 Behind Enemy Lines
3.50 Hoosiers
3.50 The Sentinel
3.00 Hoosiers
4.00 Eragon
4.50 Eragon
2.50 Hoosiers
4.00 Eragon
4.00 Flight of the Phoenix
4.00 Night at the Museum
4.00 Night at the Museum
4.00 Night at the Museum
4.50 Eragon
3.50 Night at the Museum
4.50 Night at the Museum
3.87 TOTALS

Sony
PQ Sony Title
3.50 Donnie Brasco
4.00 Blood & Chocolate
4.00 Volver
4.50 Donnie Brasco
4.50 Cruel Intentions
4.50 Stomp the Yard
4.00 Blood & Chocolate
5.00 Donnie Brasco
5.00 Closer
4.00 The Messengers
4.50 Hellboy
4.00 Rescue Me Season 3
3.00 Bruce Springsteen
4.50 Ghost Rider
4.00 Seven Years in Tibet
2.00 Bruce Springsteen
4.50 Curse of the Golden Flower
4.50 Hellboy
4.50 Rescue Me Season 3
4.50 Incubus
5.00 Ghost Rider
4.00 Rescue Me Season 3
4.00 The Messengers
4.00 Hellboy
4.00 Curse of the Golden Flower
4.00 Seven Years in Tibet
3.50 Cruel Intentions
4.00 Rescue Me Season 3
5.00 Hellboy
5.00 Seven Years in Tibet
4.18 TOTALS

Lions Gate
PQ Lionsgate Title
4.50 The Descent
4.00 Saw II
4.00 Saw III
3.50 American Psycho
3.00 Young Guns
3.00 American Psycho
4.00 First Blood
4.50 The Descent
2.50 Young Guns
2.50 Crash
3.00 Employee of the Month
3.00 Total Recall
4.00 Stargate
3.50 The Devil's Rejects
4.00 Stir of Echoes
2.50 Reservoir Dogs
4.00 Terminator 2
4.00 Saw II
3.50 Saw
3.00 Ultimate Avengers
4.50 Happily N'Ever After
3.00 Dirty Dancing
4.00 Basic Instinct
3.50 Weeds Season 1
3.00 Ultimate Avengers Collection
4.50 Happily N'Ever After
3.00 Ultimate Avengers Collection
3.50 Weeds Season 1
2.50 Basic Instict
5.00 Happily N'Ever After
3.55 TOTALS

Disney
PQ Buena Vista Title
3.00 GI Jane
4.50 King Arthur
4.00 The Queen
5.00 déjà vu
3.00 GI Jane
2.00 King Arthur
4.00 GI Jane
5.00 POTC Curse Black Pearl
5.00 POTC Dead Man's Chest
5.00 Apocalypto
4.00 The Queen
5.00 POTC Dead Man's Chest
5.00 POTC Curse Black Pearl
4.00 Apocalypto
3.00 King Arthur
3.50 GI Jane
4.00 déjà vu
4.00 The Queen
5.00 POTC Dead Man's Chest
5.00 POTC Curse Black Pearl
4.50 Apocalypto
5.00 POTC Dead Man's Chest
5.00 POTC Curse Black Pearl
5.00 Apocalypto
4.50 déjà vu
4.00 The Queen
5.00 POTC Dead Man's Chest
4.00 Bridge to Terabithia
4.50 Primevel
5.00 Primeval
4.32 TOTALS

So to wrap up and bust the FUD and show what dramatically really means:

PICTURE QUALITY

PQ Studio
4.32 Buena Vista
4.18 Sony
4.18 Paramount
3.92 Warner
3.87 Fox
3.67 Weinstein
3.55 Lionsgate
3.35 Universal

And just in case anyone is wondering, the Sound Quality is as follows.

SQ Studio
4.50 Buena Vista
4.18 Sony
3.82 Fox
3.73 Lionsgate
3.68 Warner
3.63 Weinstein
3.55 Paramount
3.53 Universal

Universal, over the last 30 scored reviews from High Def Digest, Upcoming Discs, DVD Talk, Home Theater Spot and Home Theater Forum, have average a whole star less than Buena Vista when it comes to PQ.

Why? I don't know. Is it attention to detail? If it was VC-1 then why isn't Warner lower? If it was the age of the movies...again...why isn't Warner lower? Look at how many reviews of their OLD movies from the 60's are in those last 30 reviews.

Here's the FIRST 30 Universal reviews from those sites.

PQ Universal Title
4.00 Apollo 13
4.00 Doom
3.50 Assault on Precinct 13
3.50 Cinderella Man
4.00 Bourne Supremacy
3.00 Bone Collector
4.00 Red Dragon
4.50 Backdraft
4.50 F&F Tokyo
4.50 Dazed & Confused
4.00 End of Days
4.50 2 Fast 2 Furious
3.50 Fast Times
2.50 Army of
4.00 Waist Deep
3.00 The Break-Up
4.50 The Thing
4.00 Slither
3.50 Interpreter
3.00 12 Monkeys
4.50 Out of Sight
2.50 Spartacus
5.00 King Kong
4.00 Waterworld
4.00 Dupree
3.50 American Werewolf
4.00 The Mummy
4.00 How the Grinch Stole Christmas
3.50 Miami Vice
4.00 Dune
3.83 TOTALS

First 30 - 3.83
Last 30 - 3.35

You tell me which average you'd rather have your discs getting.

UxiSXRD

06-27-07, 09:54 PM

Awesome work. How about a cookie if you break it down to certain time periods? :)

I'd love to see HDDVD launch versus Blu-ray launch. Versus say... November 2006 versus say January 2007 and current (June 2007).

Nescio

06-27-07, 10:31 PM

Indeed impressive and interesting.

Urza

06-27-07, 10:43 PM

Funny how there is no rating about how GOOD the movie is, we talk so much about PQ. Do we ever watch a movie?

Many movies on the entire list are a bunch of CRAP, yet I dont see a rating for those :D

dpags

06-28-07, 01:01 AM

Here's something interesting - the last 30 reviews grouped by studio.

FUD is defeated by FACT.

Universal

Weinstein

Warner

Paramount

Fox

Sony

Lions Gate

Disney

So to wrap up and bust the FUD and show what dramatically really means:

PICTURE QUALITY

PQ Studio
4.32 Buena Vista
4.18 Sony
4.18 Paramount
3.92 Warner
3.87 Fox
3.67 Weinstein
3.55 Lionsgate
3.35 Universal

And just in case anyone is wondering, the Sound Quality is as follows.

SQ Studio
4.50 Buena Vista
4.18 Sony
3.82 Fox
3.73 Lionsgate
3.68 Warner
3.63 Weinstein
3.55 Paramount
3.53 Universal

Universal, over the last 30 scored reviews from High Def Digest, Upcoming Discs, DVD Talk, Home Theater Spot and Home Theater Forum, have average a whole star less than Buena Vista when it comes to PQ.

Why? I don't know. Is it attention to detail? If it was VC-1 then why isn't Warner lower? If it was the age of the movies...again...why isn't Warner lower? Look at how many reviews of their OLD movies from the 60's are in those last 30 reviews.

Here's the FIRST 30 Universal reviews from those sites.

First 30 - 3.85
Last 30 - 3.35

You tell me which average you'd rather have your discs getting.

Excellent work

SEMAJ92

06-28-07, 02:20 AM

FUD is defeated by FACT.

That would be true if you actually offered any facts. Instead, you offer reviews. Averages of reviews at that.

You tell me which average you'd rather have your discs getting.

Why would you even care about that? Unless you need continued outside justification of the format you've bought into.

Since your so concerned for Universal's recent HD DVD picture quality issues, please tell us, what did you think of the pq for Mystery Men?

danieloneil01

06-28-07, 02:37 AM

That's alot of numbers that I think really don't mean a whole lot.. JJust buy your movie on the media you have or think is the best between the 2..

And even Studios mess up and get lazy so just rent it or wait for a review by someone that uses arbitrary numbers..

WiFi-Spy

06-28-07, 06:47 AM

what about a list of IMDB ratings for the last 20 titles?

JBlacklow

06-28-07, 07:48 AM

Funny how there is no rating about how GOOD the movie is, we talk so much about PQ. Do we ever watch a movie?

Many movies on the entire list are a bunch of CRAP, yet I dont see a rating for those :DMaybe that's because quality is SUBJECTIVE? One man's trash is another man's treasure and all that.

Did you think about that?

Kram Sacul

06-28-07, 09:28 AM

This is the wrong forum about talking about the quality of the movie. We're here for the picture and sound. Yep, screw content, I want a big demo reel. :D

Grubert

06-28-07, 09:36 AM

This is the wrong forum about talking about the quality of the movie. We're here for the picture and sound. Yep, screw content, I want a big demo reel. :D

I'm getting confused... (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10899239#post10899239)

Being better than the dvd shouldn't be the minimum standard. Of course it's better than the dvd. It's HD. T5E, Spartacus, HoFD, etc are all better than their dvd incarnations too.

Kram Sacul

06-28-07, 09:57 AM

How so?

fozziwig

06-28-07, 10:36 AM

I'm getting confused... (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10899239#post10899239)

Quality of movie (artisitic):

Spidey 3 Roolz
Spidey 3 Suckz

Quality of movie (technical):

Spidey 3 has awesome PQ
Spidey 3 has awesome AQ

At least I hope it will... :)

Grubert

06-28-07, 10:48 AM

How so?

In your first post you seem to make a sarcastic comment towards videophiles who want great picture quality, but in the second post you criticize the bad picture quality of some catalog titles - so you want great picture quality, too.

Unless I missed some irony either way. ;)

patrick99

06-28-07, 10:51 AM

Josh Z

06-28-07, 11:20 AM

Here's something interesting - the last 30 reviews grouped by studio.

FUD is defeated by FACT.

The problem with your post is that you're attempting to apply objective statistical analysis to review star rating scales that are entirely subjective. Anyone who's actually written a review will tell you what a pain in the ass the star-rating scale is and how easily it is misinterpreted (as you're doing here).

xbdestroya

06-28-07, 11:52 AM

The problem with your post is that you're attempting to apply objective statistical analysis to review star rating scales that are entirely subjective. Anyone who's actually written a review will tell you what a pain in the ass the star-rating scale is and how easily it is misinterpreted (as you're doing here).

But as the range of titles and sites is increased, the ability to rate objectively does nevertheless rise. This is five sites and hundreds of reviews here, and the numbers are in... to say nothing of the trends.

If you believe that Blu-ray has not had the most consistent PQ of late, why not just state that in open terms Josh and present your position for such?

Kram Sacul

06-28-07, 12:02 PM

In your first post you seem to make a sarcastic comment towards videophiles who want great picture quality, but in the second post you criticize the bad picture quality of some catalog titles - so you want great picture quality, too.

Unless I missed some irony either way. ;)

I was being sarcastic in this thread. Since AVS is so largely technically minded a lot of times the content becomes irrelevent compared to the picture and sound quality. The movies are just a way to show off expensive equipment, not the other way around.

wewantflair

06-28-07, 12:06 PM

But as the range of titles and sites is increased, the ability to rate objectively does nevertheless rise. This is five sites and hundreds of reviews here, and the numbers are in... to say nothing of the trends.

If you believe that Blu-ray has not had the most consistent PQ of late, why not just state that in open terms Josh and present your position for such?

But the criteria DVD Talk reviewers use to evaluate PQ might be different from the criteria HFD reviewers use to come up with their numbers, effectively making this a simple mathematical issue of incompatible "units."

Even using DVD Talk as an example, the site uses different staff reviewers for BD and HD (with some overlap). If a reviewer of one type of disc uses a different base rating for PQ than the reviewer of the other type (say, reviewer A gives a film with average PQ 3 stars, while reviewer B gives it 2.5), then the numbers will always be skewed, regardless of the volume of reviews.

Once you factor in the number of catalog HD DVD releases relative to new releases on BD, any right-minded person can see that there is no rational and mathematical basis for this purported "statistical analysis." On the contrary, it's the very definition of voodoo science.

As a dual-format owner, I've seen PQ standouts on the high and low end from both formats. Dirty Dancing and Bruce Almighty were disappointing, but the Matrix and Apocalypto were breathtaking. Why isn't it enough to let the reviews stand on their own? Why do some people feel the need to apply pseudo-analytical trends to every aspect of the format war?

dobyblue

06-28-07, 12:59 PM

That would be true if you actually offered any facts. Instead, you offer reviews. Averages of reviews at that.

Um, those are facts which back up the claim that Universal is doing a piss poor rush job at the moment.

dobyblue

06-28-07, 01:01 PM

The problem with your post is that you're attempting to apply objective statistical analysis to review star rating scales that are entirely subjective. Anyone who's actually written a review will tell you what a pain in the ass the star-rating scale is and how easily it is misinterpreted (as you're doing here).
So what you're saying is Universal could actually be making the best transfers of their films above all the other studios, but the numbers don't show that and the reviews from the five sites including yours don't show that?

dobyblue

06-28-07, 01:04 PM

Why isn't it enough to let the reviews stand on their own? Why do some people feel the need to apply pseudo-analytical trends to every aspect of the format war?

While there are still morons out there spouting off about how HD DVD somehow has inherently better PQ than Blu-ray, there is a need.

xbdestroya

06-28-07, 01:14 PM

But the criteria DVD Talk reviewers use to evaluate PQ might be different from the criteria HFD reviewers use to come up with their numbers, effectively making this a simple mathematical issue of incompatible "units."

Wetwantflair I understand what you're saying, but I'll condense your post to the above. I agree that every site might use different criteria, but this helps to prove my point rather than not, because across four of those sites, with the dissenter DVDTalk at a difference of three hundredths... I think that even in a subjective realm like PQ - that can *never* be truly quantified - we can nevertheless make the grudging conclusion that BD is picking up PQ points, and this is simply due to the (strong) anecdotal trends.

It says something in my mind in a very practical and real sense that what's attacked is the theorization, and not the conclusion.

george king

06-28-07, 01:19 PM

doby,

While there are still morons out there spouting off about how HD DVD somehow has inherently better PQ than Blu-ray

At least be accurate. To the best of my knowledge no one has said that HD is inherently better than BD. Actually, BD supporters claim that BD is inherently better than HD.

ack_bk

06-28-07, 01:50 PM

doby,

At least be accurate. To the best of my knowledge no one has said that HD is inherently better than BD. Actually, BD supporters claim that BD is inherently better than HD.

I think Doby was referring to mid to late 2006 when Blu-Ray released a few poor PQ movies. HD DVD zealots really beat up Blu-Ray supporters over it (anybody remember the 5th Element?) Sony and Disney got their act together and have since really raised the bar (just got done watching Hellboy on BD last night, and it looked and sounded amazing for a catalog title).

Now it looks like the shoe is on the other foot and Universal seems to have dropped their PQ standards (almost every reviewer I read has noted this over the past month or so). I am no longer blind buying HD DVD titles on Universal until I read at least 2-3 reviews. I am not paying $19+ dollars for something that is only marginally better than I can find on DVD for $5-10...

wewantflair

06-28-07, 02:32 PM

Wetwantflair I understand what you're saying, but I'll condense your post to the above. I agree that every site might use different criteria, but this helps to prove my point rather than not, because across four of those sites, with the dissenter DVDTalk at a difference of three hundredths... I think that even in a subjective realm like PQ - that can *never* be truly quantified - we can nevertheless make the grudging conclusion that BD is picking up PQ points, and this is simply due to the (strong) anecdotal trends.

It says something in my mind in a very practical and real sense that what's attacked is the theorization, and not the conclusion.

I don't think anyone can doubt that BD has been picking up PQ points, but a more intelligent person will look to why this is - focusing on new releases and top-flight catalog releases.

I don't mind this fact at all - I happily snap up the new releases I like as well as the catalog releases that I think I need.

The theory and intent behind the OP is clear (RAH RAH BD, HD SUX, neener neener), and reasonable and rational posters on both sides of the fence need to reject posters like these and their methods simply because they do nothing but taint the somewhat intelligent discourse that allows communities like this to thrive.

If you want to compare like releases from Paramount or WB, fine. That is a logical and scientific comparison. If you put any stock into what the OP is doing, you are only contributing to the decline of this place.

xbdestroya

06-28-07, 03:28 PM

I don't think anyone can doubt that BD has been picking up PQ points, but a more intelligent person will look to why this is - focusing on new releases and top-flight catalog releases.

I don't mind this fact at all - I happily snap up the new releases I like as well as the catalog releases that I think I need.

The theory and intent behind the OP is clear (RAH RAH BD, HD SUX, neener neener), and reasonable and rational posters on both sides of the fence need to reject posters like these and their methods simply because they do nothing but taint the somewhat intelligent discourse that allows communities like this to thrive.

If you want to compare like releases from Paramount or WB, fine. That is a logical and scientific comparison. If you put any stock into what the OP is doing, you are only contributing to the decline of this place.

Well, as indicated elsewhere the impetus for this thread is more as a reaction to an oft displayed reliance of those that would seek to malign BD in pointing to it as the format of inferior and inconsistent PQ. Now - I doubt that you are supportive of those that do so, and in that light I can say yes, it would be better if the maligners and cheerleaders on all sides quieted down... but by the same token where two wrongs don't make a right, correcting (even if abrasively) a common misconception - and one that is actively propagated to this day - I don't feel is a move whose methods negate the value of the purpose.

For better or for worse, there are those on both sides that revel in maligning the opposing format; if AVS is in decline, it is not due to threads like this in my eyes, but because of the reasons threads like this need even exist in the first place: the propagation of rumors and false associations to the point that it becomes likened to local lore and legend rather than any sort of technical (or actual) understanding of the formats and their potential.

george king

06-28-07, 04:55 PM

ack_bk

I think Doby was referring to mid to late 2006 when Blu-Ray released a few poor PQ movies. HD DVD zealots really beat up Blu-Ray supporters over it (anybody remember the 5th Element?) Sony and Disney got their act together and have since really raised the bar (just got done watching Hellboy on BD last night, and it looked and sounded amazing for a catalog title).

No, doby said that HD DVD supporters were stating that HD was INHERENTLY better. To the best of my knowledge, no one claimed that. The claim was that BD put out some bad looking movies, which they did. I dont think that anyone claimed that BD was INCAPABLE of putting out good looking movies, which is what Doby is claiming.

Lodef

06-28-07, 05:01 PM

ack_bk

No, doby said that HD DVD supporters were stating that HD was INHERENTLY better. To the best of my knowledge, no one claimed that. The claim was that BD put out some bad looking movies, which they did. I dont think that anyone claimed that BD was INCAPABLE of putting out good looking movies, which is what Doby is claiming.

Yes that is correct if you like your movies to look like their all animations. :D

Urza

06-29-07, 11:09 AM

Maybe that's because quality is SUBJECTIVE? One man's trash is another man's treasure and all that.

Did you think about that?

Ok, sorry, 2 people do like Ghost Rider :rolleyes:

JBlacklow

06-29-07, 11:22 AM

Ok, sorry, 2 people do like Ghost Rider :rolleyes:Yeah, that explains why it was #1 in sales and rentals when it was released, and how it's been #1 in total HD sales for the last two weeks.

Ah, it must be so nice to not live in reality. Are the pink elephants cuddly where you are?

Josh Z

06-29-07, 11:45 AM

But as the range of titles and sites is increased, the ability to rate objectively does nevertheless rise. This is five sites and hundreds of reviews here, and the numbers are in... to say nothing of the trends.

If you believe that Blu-ray has not had the most consistent PQ of late, why not just state that in open terms Josh and present your position for such?

To say that Blu-ray has "the most consistent PQ of late" disregards the reasons why Blu-ray PQ has gotten more consistent: Fox's complete drop-out of releasing on Blu-ray at all, and the deliberate decision by Sony and Disney to scale back on catalog titles in favor of new releases and selective "eye candy" prestige pictures. Universal is cranking out more catalog titles than any other studio, with more emphasis on diversity of content than eye candy appeal.

Yes, some of Universal's catalog releases are coming from dated masters. Considering how poorly catalog titles sell on both formats, remastering every single movie is not financially viable. So you have a choice: Do you want Universal's catalog titles, or would you prefer that they scale back their output like Disney and Sony and only focus on new releases and eye candy pictures?

Rather than focus on the PQ star rating scale, which by nature must balance the technical specs of the digital transfer against the stylistic intentions of the movie's original photography (and therefore is not just a measure of disc authoring or compression quality), a more interesting analysis would be to compare the final recommendation results per format. Which format or studio has the most "Recommended"s or "Highly Recommended"s versus "Rent It"s or "Skip It"s (to use DVDTalk's nomenclature, which will vary per site)? That might actually tell you something worthwhile.

ack_bk

06-29-07, 12:26 PM

To say that Blu-ray has "the most consistent PQ of late" disregards the reasons why
Yes, some of Universal's catalog releases are coming from dated masters. Considering how poorly catalog titles sell on both formats, remastering every single movie is not financially viable. So you have a choice: Do you want Universal's catalog titles, or would you prefer that they scale back their output like Disney and Sony and only focus on new releases and eye candy pictures?

Here is my take. This may be the last optical media format people are willing to buy until digital downloads and pay-per-view start to dominate sales and studios really start pushing content on those mediums (5years? 10 years? 12 years?).

With that said, I would expect that studios would take the time to remaster titles that need to be remastered. Universal is trying to do too much, too fast. I would rather they cut down on their releases and make them worth buying. $19+ dollars for a marginally better DVD that costs $5-10 is not going help propel sales or the HD DVD format. Univesal is the only exclusive major studio supporting HD DVD. If the majority of their catalog titles end up being rentals at best, what is the point in buying an HD DVD player if I can get everything else on the other format? All I know is that I get the UniversalHD channel on the Dish network. Many of the movies they are releasing on that channel look just as good as the HD DVD version (3 star PQ).

chefboy1

06-29-07, 12:32 PM

chefboy1

06-29-07, 12:34 PM

Yes, some of Universal's catalog releases are coming from dated masters. Considering how poorly catalog titles sell on both formats, remastering every single movie is not financially viable. So you have a choice: Do you want Universal's catalog titles, or would you prefer that they scale back their output like Disney and Sony and only focus on new releases and eye candy pictures?

Wait, if catalog titles aren't worth remastering because they sell poorly, why bother releasing them now so early in a new format's life? Clearly even not enough early adopters are demanding those catalog titles. If you really want the format to succeed and gain traction, then they should be putting out titles that truly demonstrate the difference of HD. Nothing will kill the HD format faster than the average customer looking at SD vs HD and not seeing a dramatic difference.

I'd rather they wait until the HD market can pay and support a fully remastered title and do the best job instead. I don't want half-assed transfers just because they want to pump out as many titles as possible. I really don't understand why you're not pushing for quality over quantity.

patrick99

06-29-07, 12:35 PM

Here is my take. This may be the last optical media format people are willing to buy until digital downloads and pay-per-view start to dominate sales and studios really start pushing content on those mediums (5years? 10 years? 12 years?).

With that said, I would expect that studios would take the time to remaster titles that need to be remastered. Universal is trying to do too much, too fast. I would rather they cut down on their releases and make them worth buying. $19+ dollars for a marginally better DVD that costs $5-10 is not going help propel sales or the HD DVD format. Univesal is the only exclusive major studio supporting HD DVD. If the majority of their catalog titles end up being rentals at best, what is the point in buying an HD DVD player if I can get everything else on the other format? All I know is that I get the UniversalHD channel on the Dish network. Many of the movies they are releasing on that channel look just as good as the HD DVD version (3 star PQ).

It certainly seems reasonable to infer that Universal has made some kind of commitment to release a certain number of titles on HD DVD and is doing the minimum necessary to fulfill that commitment. This approach is not what is needed to help HD DVD and will not do anything to help Universal either in any but the most short term and short sighted way.

donricouga

06-29-07, 12:36 PM

Here is my take. This may be the last optical media format people are willing to buy until digital downloads and pay-per-view start to dominate sales and studios really start pushing content on those mediums (5years? 10 years? 12 years?).

With that said, I would expect that studios would take the time to remaster titles that need to be remastered. Universal is trying to do too much, too fast. I would rather they cut down on their releases and make them worth buying. $19+ dollars for a marginally better DVD that costs $5-10 is not going help propel sales or the HD DVD format. Univesal is the only exclusive major studio supporting HD DVD. If the majority of their catalog titles end up being rentals at best, what is the point in buying an HD DVD player if I can get everything else on the other format? All I know is that I get the UniversalHD channel on the Dish network. Many of the movies they are releasing on that channel look just as good as the HD DVD version (3 star PQ).

I agree. I'm not sure why Universal has decided to do the quantity over quality approach but this isn't a smart move. If they simply took the time to release quality movies, perhaps at a slower pace, this will still help out hddvd.
People recently buying into hddvd will not be impressed with the new format while people recently buying into bluray will be very pleased with the step up in quality.
Even if they are newer releases at this point in the format war, where both sides are trying to win over consumers, superb picture quality is a must !

eightninesuited

06-29-07, 12:38 PM

Yes, some of Universal's catalog releases are coming from dated masters. Considering how poorly catalog titles sell on both formats, remastering every single movie is not financially viable. So you have a choice: Do you want Universal's catalog titles, or would you prefer that they scale back their output like Disney and Sony and only focus on new releases and eye candy pictures?

Most of us already own the DVDs of movies Universal is releasing. If not for PQ and AQ what reason do I have for buying the HD version? The general consensus is, Universal is releasing sub-par transfers with a quantity over quality approach.

Rather than focus on the PQ star rating scale, which by nature must balance the technical specs of the digital transfer against the stylistic intentions of the movie's original photography (and therefore is not just a measure of disc authoring or compression quality), a more interesting analysis would be to compare the final recommendation results per format. Which format or studio has the most "Recommended"s or "Highly Recommended"s versus "Rent It"s or "Skip It"s (to use DVDTalk's nomenclature, which will vary per site)? That might actually tell you something worthwhile.

You mean like this? (http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=28311) :rolleyes:

briankmonkey

06-29-07, 12:39 PM

I agree. I'm not sure why Universal has decided to do the quantity over quality approach but this isn't a smart move. If they simply took the time to release quality movies, perhaps at a slower pace, this will still help out hddvd.
People recently buying into hddvd will not be impressed with the new format while people recently buying into bluray will be very pleased with the step up in quality.
Even if they are newer releases at this point in the format war, where both sides are trying to win over consumers, superb picture quality is a must !

hopefully when/if they go blu they do new transfers.

dobyblue

06-29-07, 12:39 PM

To say that Blu-ray has "the most consistent PQ of late" disregards the reasons why Blu-ray PQ has gotten more consistent: Fox's complete drop-out of releasing on Blu-ray at all, and the deliberate decision by Sony and Disney to scale back on catalog titles in favor of new releases and selective "eye candy" prestige pictures. Universal is cranking out more catalog titles than any other studio, with more emphasis on diversity of content than eye candy appeal.

Yes, some of Universal's catalog releases are coming from dated masters. Considering how poorly catalog titles sell on both formats, remastering every single movie is not financially viable. So you have a choice: Do you want Universal's catalog titles, or would you prefer that they scale back their output like Disney and Sony and only focus on new releases and eye candy pictures?

Rather than focus on the PQ star rating scale, which by nature must balance the technical specs of the digital transfer against the stylistic intentions of the movie's original photography (and therefore is not just a measure of disc authoring or compression quality), a more interesting analysis would be to compare the final recommendation results per format. Which format or studio has the most "Recommended"s or "Highly Recommended"s versus "Rent It"s or "Skip It"s (to use DVDTalk's nomenclature, which will vary per site)? That might actually tell you something worthwhile.

You post here completely ignores 2 major aspects.

1) Fox's PQ was at an average of 3.84 when they stopped releasing. That put them in 4th spot, which Sony has since taken over.
2) Warner are still very highly ranked despite their constant onslaught of catalogue titles that are substantially older than the Universal catalogue titles.

dobyblue

06-29-07, 12:40 PM

ack_bk

No, doby said that HD DVD supporters were stating that HD was INHERENTLY better. To the best of my knowledge, no one claimed that. The claim was that BD put out some bad looking movies, which they did. I dont think that anyone claimed that BD was INCAPABLE of putting out good looking movies, which is what Doby is claiming.

Please - we're obviously not surfing the same internet.

briankmonkey

06-29-07, 12:41 PM

You mean like this? (http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=28311) :rolleyes:

you read my mind, lol :p

donricouga

06-29-07, 12:42 PM

I did a search on Amazon in Mid-June. Can you show me how BD is not putting out a diversity of content?
BD HD Category

158 147 Action & Adventure
13 6 Animation
7 5 Art House & International
64 82 Comedy
23 22 Documentary
124 128 Drama
48 44 Horror
46 11 Kids & Family
9 6 Military & War
25 27 Music Video & Concerts
6 5 Musicals & Performing Arts
67 65 Mystery & Suspense
63 72 Science Fiction & Fantasy
14 11 Special Interests
11 9 Television
9 5 Westerns

And if Fox/Warner/Sony/etc. starts releasing a majority of less-than-stellar PQ releases, then I fully expect AVS members to jump on case as well. It worked on Sony to remaster The Fifth Element.

That is an excellent post. Sony has already established that they can deliver in the PQ. Fox is still unknown at the time but given that they done some good quality pq releases, even using the older mpeg-2, I fully expect them to deliver quality releases. Fantastic Four 2 should look very, very good.

UxiSXRD

06-29-07, 12:48 PM

So you have a choice: Do you want Universal's catalog titles, or would you prefer that they scale back their output like Disney and Sony and only focus on new releases and eye candy pictures?

I'm sure Universal is helped in the decision by the fact that they don't have (M)ANY successful new release and eye candy pictures. :p

While techincal "eye-candy" specs and such and aesthetic elements like plot, story, etc are not mutually excsluive, you don't need high def for the latter and high def lacking the former is... pointless.

patrick99

06-29-07, 12:50 PM

hopefully when/if they go blu they do new transfers.

I am not expecting they will do that, unfortunately.

wreckshop

06-29-07, 01:24 PM

No, doby said that HD DVD supporters were stating that HD was INHERENTLY better. To the best of my knowledge, no one claimed that. The claim was that BD put out some bad looking movies, which they did. I dont think that anyone claimed that BD was INCAPABLE of putting out good looking movies, which is what Doby is claiming.

Well, if hd dvd supporters claim that VC-1 is the best looking codec, and all hd dvd releases are VC-1, whereas very few BDs are, aren't they implying that hd dvd is inherently better?

briankmonkey

06-29-07, 01:28 PM

I am not expecting they will do that, unfortunately.

probably not but, probably just receive a sloppy port but you never know.

george king

06-29-07, 01:42 PM

wreckshop

Well, if hd dvd supporters claim that VC-1 is the best looking codec, and all hd dvd releases are VC-1, whereas very few BDs are, aren't they implying that hd dvd is inherently better?

No, not at all. The implication of what you say is that if BD used VC-1 there would be no difference in PQ.

Doby was claiming that HD DVD supporters were saying that there were no conditions underwhich BD could match HD. In other words, BD had something wrong with it where it never ever could match HD. This is the implication of the statement "inherently".

That is not an argument that HD supporters made. OTOH, some BD supporters have repeatedly claimed that if BD were optimized, that HD could not match the PQ because of space and bandwidth differences. In other words, BD supporters have stated that HD is inherently inferior.

Urza

06-30-07, 02:08 PM

Yeah, that explains why it was #1 in sales and rentals when it was released, and how it's been #1 in total HD sales for the last two weeks.

Ah, it must be so nice to not live in reality. Are the pink elephants cuddly where you are?

Dont be silly. How many times do people have to mention that if a movie makes tons of $$$$$$$$ or sells a ton of copies, does not mean its a good movie. Ghost rider is making more money than Shawshank Redemption did, are you saying Ghost Rider is a better movie? :rolleyes:

xbdestroya

06-30-07, 02:11 PM

Dont be silly. How many times do people have to mention that if a movie makes tons of $$$$$$$$ or sells a ton of copies, does not mean its a good movie. Ghost rider is making more money than Shawshank Redemption did, are you saying Ghost Rider is a better movie? :rolleyes:

'Good' is a relative term, but what we'll all agree on is that Ghost Rider is the more successful movie. And this "war" is about success.

Supermans

06-30-07, 02:21 PM

I am glad you started this thread as I have noticed this as well. I have noticed Disney, but especially Sony has REALLY stepped it up, whereas Universal and even Weinstein have really dropped the ball.

In my opinion Sony has been the best of the best in terms of improvement over the past 6 months, they just have been kicking butt.

To me it seems that Universal in now clearly more concerned with Quantity vs. Quality. Universal has released many recent titles littered with film debris and massive amounts of EE. It is clear to my eye that Universal's overall releases in 2006 were far superior to those releases in 2007.

~Josh

I too have been saying this now for quite awhile that Blu-Ray's recent BD50 AVC titles from Disney and Sony have really raised the bar higher than anything HD-DVD has come out with. Arguably The Matrix on HD-DVD doesn't equal the quality of the new Pirates Films for example.. Even though I don't agree with many of the reviews done above, it is good to have a balance of all the reviews and hope things balance out. Even though some of those HD-DVD reviews are way too high..

Urza

06-30-07, 02:24 PM

'Good' is a relative term, but what we'll all agree on is that Ghost Rider is the more successful movie. And this "war" is about success.

Yea, but what happens to the good thoughtfull movies? Why does it always have to be about special effects? Does anyone write a good script anymore? Its also not as subjective as people think. Go to Rottentomatoes and look at highly rated movies. Most did not even break 100mil. In fact, most did not make near that. I think Knocked up finally hit 100mil, and gets rave reviews.

It seems like this is the order of importance

1.PQ
2.SQ
3. The movie itself

Seems like it is out of order.

Josh Z

06-30-07, 02:33 PM

It certainly seems reasonable to infer that Universal has made some kind of commitment to release a certain number of titles on HD DVD and is doing the minimum necessary to fulfill that commitment. This approach is not what is needed to help HD DVD and will not do anything to help Universal either in any but the most short term and short sighted way.

Patrick, I thought you liked Universal and hated Warner. Now it's the other way around? Make up your mind! ;)

Josh Z

06-30-07, 02:38 PM

I did a search on Amazon in Mid-June. Can you show me how BD is not putting out a diversity of content?

First off, Amazon's "genre" tags are far from reliable. But even if we take them at face value, how many of those movies are more than 10 years old?

Wait, if catalog titles aren't worth remastering because they sell poorly, why bother releasing them now so early in a new format's life? Clearly even not enough early adopters are demanding those catalog titles. If you really want the format to succeed and gain traction, then they should be putting out titles that truly demonstrate the difference of HD. Nothing will kill the HD format faster than the average customer looking at SD vs HD and not seeing a dramatic difference.

I'd rather they wait until the HD market can pay and support a fully remastered title and do the best job instead. I don't want half-assed transfers just because they want to pump out as many titles as possible. I really don't understand why you're not pushing for quality over quantity.

Listen, I'm not saying I'm thrilled with it. I'm just pointing out the reality of the situation. Putting out a large volume of catalog titles with the best sources available to them currently is a business decision the studio has made.

Your belief is that sales of these formats live and die based on picture quality. Universal's belief is that people buy based on movies that they like, not based on technical quality. Who is right remains to be seen.

You mean like this? (http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=28311) :rolleyes:

Hey, if the movie isn't worth buying, who cares what it's picture quality looks like?

You post here completely ignores 2 major aspects.

1) Fox's PQ was at an average of 3.84 when they stopped releasing. That put them in 4th spot, which Sony has since taken over.
2) Warner are still very highly ranked despite their constant onslaught of catalogue titles that are substantially older than the Universal catalogue titles.

Most of Fox's top-ranking discs before they shut down were new releases. Their catalog titles (like Kiss of the Dragon) had an erratic track record no better than Universal's.

And although Warner has released some movies older than Universal's, somewhat like Sony they have focused on titles that they have new masters for. The Searchers and Adventures of Robin Hood are both very old movies, but they were also both freshly remastered for DVD just recently.